Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror [Paperback]

Danny Schechter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0742531090 | ISBN-13: 978-0742531093 | Publication Date: June 2003

'Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, and they take refuge in that.' --CBS News Anchor Dan Rather on BBC News Night, May 16, 2002 In Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, MediaChannel founder and editor, Danny Schechter, 'the News Dissector,' critically examines media coverage since 9/11. Schechter analyzes what has been covered and, more tellingly, left out, in news coverage of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Drawing from the reporting of over one thousand worldwide radio, newspaper, television, and internet affiliates, the result is a scathing account of how the media has become a megaphone for the U.S. military and its war on terror. More than just a critique, Schechter suggests a series of changes to improve our news sources and return them to the vital role a free and independent press must play to preserve a democracy. Media Wars is a timely assessment of what we are and are not being told in the most important story of our new century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Schechter, formerly a mainstream journalist, now a producer for Globalvision, a television and film production company, has collected some of his own post-September 11 reportage, in addition to articles written by colleagues at Media Tenor (a firm that analyzes media content), the Project for Excellence in Journalism and other critical outlets. Schechter believes the American media (here, mostly television, some newspapers and magazines, but not radio) have failed the American public by not providing meaningful coverage of world news, largely due to government and corporate pressure. Even after September 11, the question the media addressed wasn't "why terrorism?" but "who to blame for it?" After several introductory essays, Schechter's opinion takes over, as he shares his own reactions to world news post-September 11, interrupted by flash-forwards or backwards, and intercut with charts categorizing the content of various television shows or newspapers, as well as analyses by other media "dissectors." The concluding section reviews Schechter's own career, describes the formation and mission of Globalvision and his other endeavor, Mediachannel.org, and even reprints sections of the introductory materials, notably Walter Cronkite's remarks on the need for dissent. While there is some excellent material here-notably Independent correspondent Jake Lynch's "Tips for Covering Conflict"-the book overall is disorganized and repetitious, making it hard to read cover-to-cover. All the same, Schechter's call for journalists to stand up to pressure and start reporting on the world again is vitally important.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Excellent material. . . . Schechter's call for journalists to stand up to pressure and start reporting on the world again is vitally important. (Publishers Weekly )

A timely and thought-provoking challenge of current practices in journalism. (Library Journal )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742531090
• ISBN-13: 978-0742531093
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,860,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, March 2, 2004

By 

ra2sky "ra2sky" (the left coast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror (Paperback)

I would normally consider myself conservative, politically speaking, and I wasn't sure what I would think of Danny Schechter's book. Prior to reading it I had never heard of him, or mediachannel.org. That said, I found this book very thought provoking and I don't watch the news in the same way anymore. Schechter provides important questions for a news consumer to ask, and makes even a casual news watcher more critical of any inherent bias in the media.

Perhaps because Schechter would call me a victim of American media, I found some of his Middle East commentary difficult to follow. I am probably not educated on those topics enough. Instead, I most appreciated the critiques of domestic 9/11 coverage. I also thought that at times the book seemed to be overly "selling" the author's website (mediachannel.org). After reading the book, I can appreciate why he is trying to popularize the site, but I thought there were just too many mentions of the site...it got in the way of what may have been more salient points. The book seemed a little long, toward the end.

In a weird tangental way, this book is an interesting partner with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, as it asks many touchy questions regarding the media's role in US culture.

In the end...it's worthwhile reading regardless of your political views, as long as you don't mind taking a critical eye toward the media.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A latter-day I.F. Stone, January 13, 2004

By 

Ralph D. Berenger (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror (Paperback)

Danny Schechter's Media Wars is filled with promise and unrequited anticipation. After all, the veteran newsman landed one of the biggest fishes in the shrinking global media pond: the venerable Walter Cronkite wrote an introduction, or more accurately a 30-line "introductory statement," in which the Great Man decries the media's self-censorship.

This reviewer is old enough to remember the discomfort Cronkite displayed in a documentary interview on his understanding of what the US had gotten itself into in the early years of Vietnam by the late I.F. Stone, who was in reality every inch the newsman that Cronkite became in mythology.

Schechter is very much self-cast in the I.F. Stone mode, a gadfly to the politically conservative administration, conservative media outlets, and mainstream journalism in general. He asks the impertinent questions and questions the answers, just as I.F. Stone had done four decades earlier. Izzy Stone had I.F. Stone's Weekly, a hand-to-mouth operation with readership in the highest levels of government. Schechter employs a latter-day version, a weblog, to disseminate his views, and this book is full of these polemical pieces on every subject the writer can conceive concerning the so-called War on Terror, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the increasingly chilly feelings of the world toward America. And from time to time, he publishes other writers' viewpoints as well, an odd mixture of techniques-a collection of authors, oft-mentioned references to Schechter's own media-analysis organizations, many pages of his online diary, a political polemic, and, in the beginning of the book, a respectable scholarly effort to determine what kinds of news stories US media found interesting.

Schechter's premise is that what could be a new cozy triangle between big media, big government and political leaders, and big industry, has developed in the War on Terror. The "News Dissector" is critical of conservative media programs, such as those found at Fox News, and the U.S. government's news management during the war in Afghanistan, which Schechter seems to consider illegitimate on all fronts.

The author seems particularly vexed at US coverage of the Middle East, devoting about a fifth of the book to short chapters from a variety of sources, including one section written by Fatemah Farag of Al Ahram Weekly explaining the Arab worldview, and a useful chapter by Sky News' Jake Lynch on tips for avoiding bias when covering conflict which should be required reading for anyone covering news in the Middle East, especially those already working in the region as transnational reporters and broadcasters.

In all, Schechter's book gives us too much information, a lot of it debatable, to be considered in a single dosage. The lack of an index makes the cross referencing of material impossible. But the most serious flaw may be the mixture of essays, diary entries, seemingly factual reporting, and guest chapters that give this book a hodge-podge feel.

That's not to say the book is uninteresting, particularly for those predisposed to be critical of Western media, Western governments, and market economies. Though disjointed at times, the book does move along through the many styles and techniques that could leave readers dizzy.

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspector Schechter the Conscientious Objector, January 26, 2009

By 

K. Johnson "E" (Decatur, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror (Paperback)

Danny Schechter, quite simply, misses the point. I fully appreciate all the research he has done and I absolutely agree with his argument that the media evidences extreme bias in just about everything it does. Where Danny begins to lose me, however, is with his self-righteous proclamation that "all of us have a right to know and a duty to act on what we know." Of course we have a right to know. Of course we should act on what we know. Of course we have a right to make melodramatic proclamations in superfluous books. You know what, though, Danny-boy? In all likelihood, we won't ever really know. Danny's attachment to the idea that an unbiased truth is the most valuable kind of knowledge is where his argument breaks apart.

The truth is that there is no unbiased truth. And even if there were, it would be worthless. Someone who has absolutely no bias on an issue has no business speaking on it. If they have no bias, they do not care about the issue at hand and the last thing we need is people purporting to be experts on issues about which they do not care. Thankfully, absolutely everyone is biased about absolutely everything on at least some level, so we don't have to worry about unbiased reporters.

What we do have to worry about are the biased reporters who agitate Danny so. Their bias, however, is precisely what makes their presentations valuable. The last thing we need are a bunch of stuffy academics like Danny attempting to ascertain "the one real truth" and coming up with a set of self-aggrandizing points and counterpoints before ending with a final statement that "the one thing we know for certain is that we don't know anything for certain."

Conversely, there is much value in the largely fabricated and wholly biased reports seen on Fox News. No, we cannot trust Fox News to deliver accurate information. Yes, Fox News is trying to shape our knowledge, but it is from their reports that we can see a perfectly clear presentation of how bitter WASPs with male pattern baldness feel about most issues. From Michael Moore, meanwhile, we receive a perfectly clear presentation of how 14-year-old Triple-H Club presidents who still wet the bed feel about most issues. If we balance disparate biased sources, we can piece together a picture of our own truth and base our actions off of that. That's what life's about. That is, unless you want to wait for Danny to find the one real truth for us all.