Customer Reviews

News and Culture of Lying

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An excellent, tell-it-like-is book about the mass media. It didn't receive nearly enough attention from reviewers or the general public. A couple of years ago, I planned on requiring my journalism students to read it but then found out it had just gone out of print. It should be reprinted.

I enjoyed this book because I have long believed that we live in a "Culture of Lies" and modern journalism is one of the powerful contributors to the broader phenomenon. However, I disagree with the reviewer that described the work as one of careful analysis and an argument against big business, and I thought the author missed a far larger issue...

Weaver's arguments for the failure of modern journalism are persuasive, for sure, and he provides excellent historical context for how journalism has evolved from an objective, subscriber-driven presentation of news to the advertising-driven, editorialized news we have today (written in a style that pretends to objectivity but is anything but). However, Weaver's prescriptions reminded me of political platitudes in presenting a long list of "we shoulds" without a strong argument for why any of it is likely to happen or a persuasive road map of how to make it happen.

Weaver describes himself as a classical liberal, so one would not assume that he would impose change upon journalism through regulation, but why corporations would voluntarily switch their business models and change their editorial policies at the risk of making their products more boring just escapes me. More importantly, Weaver's book ignores (in his defense, probably on purpose) the other side of the "Culture of Lying" problem: why the demand for entertainment seems to exceed the demand for truth.

I would argue that we all know that our journalists impose their opinions upon the news without declaring their biases, just as we expect our politicians and our corporate leaders to spin information to their advantage without any disclaimers. Even in polite cocktail conversation, we have all become masters of reducing complex issues down to urbane soundbites and ascerbic witticisms--because there appears to be only one thing more criminal today than shading the truth and that is, apparently, to be boring. The more clever the soundbite, the more outrageous the headline, the more ridiculous the political platitude, the more we like it and the more life an idea takes on. Whether the underlying presumption is true or not is rarely challenged, in real-time, because (a) we don't have time, (b) to do so would destroy the rhythm of the conversation, or (c) we are so cynical that we don't assume anyone is telling the whole truth anyway and therefore don't care one way or the other.

Weaver's book is good because he provides excellent insider insight into how the news is determined and presented, but he fails to address why we all just eat it up anyway. The implication by omission is that the public is stupid (or tragically innocent) and therefore it is up to journalism to reform itself out of the goodness of its heart and for the betterment of humankind (because Weaver would not likely support coerced change). I don't think this is likely.

The more fundamental question would have been WHY we all choose entertainment over truth as the chief value we seek from journalism. With the internet and cable-driven proliferation of news sources and dilution of "brand integrity" that used to help us separate propaganda from truth, what can we do to put a stake in the culture of lies other than to become (and teach our children to become) better critical thinkers? Weaver's book describes a sad phenonemon from an entertaining, insider's point of view--but his analysis covers only the supply side of bad journalism.

In my opinion, this book starts strong and ends kind of weak, but it is definitely worth reading for anyone who wants some inside scoop on how the news really works. Buy this book.

An excellent, tell-it-like-is book about the mass media. It didn't receive nearly enough attention from reviewers or the general public. A couple of years ago, I planned on requiring my journalism students to read it but then found out it had just gone out of print. It should be reprinted.

Paul Weaver uses rich ethnographic material and careful analysis to craft another clear picture of how big business fails America - news is largely a "front stage performance" (to borrow a phrase from Irving Goffman) that reflects little of what is actually going on. This excellent piece of participant observation research is equally revealing of the Corporate system of control based on editocracy, worker selection and socialization.

Paul Weaver's "Suicidal Corporation" (1988) was the first ethnography of the rhetoric of corporations that usurps the language of free market economics in order to disguise the fact that they are in reality creations of the state, and as such, behave just as bureaucratically as their parent; such is the nature of government. Further, a government-generated competitive business cycle is not a free market. We are being duped, and Weaver knows it.

Weaver's "News and the Culture of Lying" is a further investigation into why corporations pay lip service to free enterprise but practice big government, and how they pull that off.

Both of Weaver's books will interest any student of sociology or anthropology. His ethnographic case studies are good examples of doing the ethnography of corporations.

Lastly, Weaver's books deserve a place on everyone's shelf alongside George Orwell's "1984" and a DVD of "Fahrenheit 451".