Customer Reviews

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: COMMUNICATION POLITICS IN DUBIOUS TIMES (History of Communication)

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"Rich Media, Poor Democracy" is the most important recent book for anyone concerned with the real world of democracy under corporate capitalism in the year 2000. In a detailed, substantive, highly-readable study, McChesney explores how corporate control of the mass media shapes and constrains news and culture, sharply limits real freedom of the press, and undermines popular self-government as a result. McChesney shows how growing corporate media concentration threatens the open system of communication and culture that is vital to democracy - rule by the majority. I know of no other book that cuts through the neo- liberal market idolatry of our times. Yet McChesney offers hope: imaginative yet concrete ways in which citizens might contest the power of the corporate media and reclaim the best of our democratic heritage. A superb book, highly recommended.

Few books draw the much deserved praise heaped on Robert McChesney's trenchant analysis of U.S. mainstream media, Rich Media; Poor Democracy. The book's champions include Moyers, Chomsky, Zinn, Ehrenreich, Nader, Wellstone, Bagdikian, Hightower and others.

It was from reading writings such as theirs that I had thought myself well informed on the negative effect that the mass media have on our politics, culture and freedoms. But this book came as a surprise; the situation is worse than I realized. McChesney's analysis is a valuable contribution to any of us concerned about the health of our democracy.

The author's approach to his subject will satisfy the most demanding scholar yet hold the attention of the average reader. He shows the media to be a key antidemocratic force, owned as they are by billionaire corporations serving their own interests and those of others like them.

McChesney gives details:

One example of how democracy is so diminished has been the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1995. Where public participation and open debate were called for, the public was largely kept in the dark. The media are good at explaining complicated issues when it is in their interests to do so. This is not the case in the current switching from analog to digital technology.

Digital broadcasting can add computer capability to TV sets and link them to the World Wide Web, a huge boon for advertisers. Most cities' portion of the airwave spectrum now used for their 5-8 channels could accomodate up to 70 channels using digital technology. The marketing potential here is tremendous. All forms of selling through broadcasts now amount to $45 billion a year. By 2003, digital TV alone is expected to generate $60 billion a year in sales. This is power.

Our government is charged with regulating electronic media. In short, broadcasting is a public trust and in the past the public was allowed its say. Indeed, as McChesney recounts, a vigorous public participation and debate did precede the adoption of the Communications Act of 1934. It is beside the point that the efforts, of educators especially, aimed at curbing commercial abuse, ultimately failed. The people did have a say.

Awarding new outlets today also should have involved an informed and participating public with open debate. But heavy lobbying (and generous contributions to both major political parties, not to mention the reluctance of elected officials to criticize an industry which can affect their image) resulted in a brief, sham debate and a rushed decision. Virtually all we heard about was the "wow" element of the new technology.

At the time, the public was promised that high quality and low prices would result from competition between firms. Instead we see frequent massive mergers that further reduce competition. Radio is an example: by 1997, in each of 50 of the largest markets, 3 firms controlled 50% of radio ad revenues. In 23 of those markets, 3 firms controlled 80%.

Other sections of the book discuss the significance of globalization of commercial media, the limits of the Internet as a boon to democracy, and corporate frustrating of the democratic process. But don't despair. In a final chapter, McChesney outlines efforts that can be made to promote democracy.

For anyone concerned about political matters, if only as a voting citizen, the book is a must read.

Bob McChesney's new book is an incisive and highly readable analysis of the relationship between the media and our political culture, and should be required reading for anyone who is puzzling over some of the most pressing questions of the day linked to citizenship and the future of democracy.

With his characteristic attention to history and media scholarship, McChesney asks whether it is possible for our society to realize its democratic potential in the absence of media reform. He persuasively argues that citizens who seek to effect social change neglect media reform at their peril, and he offers concrete suggestions on where and how to begin.

This is a lucid and impassioned book, in the tradition of Herb Schiller, Ben Bagdikian and Noam Chomsky, and an indispensable addition to any media education library.

This book was enlightening. After reading this book you will probably be shocked at the power of just a few media firms and find it scary how easy it is for just a few companies to have major impacts on culture and society. McChesney also fairly effectively argues that this is linked to the decline in political participation.

While I really liked the content of this book and the ease of reading, the arguments are redundant, where the same points are mentioned over and over again. It was like McChesney did not write an outline or organize his ideas before writing this book, but instead just wrote the thoughts as they popped into his head no matter how jumbled they were. Other than that, the book is great, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an open mind and willingness to listen to someone critique our present "democratic" system and "neoliberalism".

Structure: From intro to conclusion, the book is 319 pages long (though the arguments probably could have been made easily with half the pages). It is divided into two parts (politics and history) with 3 chapters in each part (with a chapter in each section having a global focus):

Section 1-Politics

Chapter 1: U.S. Media at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century

Chapter 2: The Media System Goes Global

Chapter 3: Will the Internet Set Us Free?

Section 2-History

Chapter 4: Educators and the Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935

Chapter 5: Public Broadcasting: Past, Present, and Future?

Chapter 6: The New Theology of the First Amendment: Class Privilege over Democracy

Note: There is a monthly review written by McChesney (Volume 52, Number 10 March 2001 Global Media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism) that basically summarizes most of the points made in this book. The book gives a lot of history and a lot of details that are not included in this article, but if you are just interested in the main points, this article may be more worth your time. (The article also expresses his ideas effectively and contains a lot of detail)

Books on Similar Topics (according to a review written by Gregg Easterbrook on this book):

*Breaking the News : How the Media Undermine American Democracy by James Fallows

*Spin Cycle by Howard Kurtz

*Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media by Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel

*The Republic of Denial: Press, Politics, and Public Life by Michael Janeway

In this very important book, McChesney has done a great job of researching how our media have evolved over the past 80 years. Anyone who wonders why today's radio and TV are insipid wastes of our public airwaves (which they get to use for free) will find the answers here. Newspapers aren't far behind in this downward spiraling toward content-free mush. We are surely a more ignorant and less cultured nation in large part due to decisions made in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the idea of establishing radio as a public, education-oriented system was tragically shot down. Now we are left with a floundering, increasingly commercialized National Public Broadcasting System, and a shockingly hypercommercialized, inbred, overmerged "free-market" media system, made worse by the give-away Telecommunications Act of 1996 that hardly anyone knows about--for good reason: the media must not want us to know what they've done. This book will really open your eyes. You might even want to cry over the missed opportunities we have had as a society due to the rapaciousness of Big Media. Would have given the book 5 stars, but it's too academic/pedantic to be pleasurable reading. Also, the author occasionally rants more than is seemly in an ostensibly objective history. Still, who can can blame him? I felt like ranting too while reading it.

"Rich Media, Poor Democracy" is different than the usual media criticism in several important ways. It is accessible and readable. It is relevant and timely. It is populist rather than elitist. And the conclusions are irrefutable rather than subjective or interpretive.

Anyone who is interested in why our media and entertainment sources are the way they are, especially in these rapidly changing times, has to read this book. Anyone who is interested in why our world is the way it is really ought to read it, too.

For an analysis of today's media economy, you really can't find a better book.

This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the current decrepit state of our media and how it got that way.

Robert W. McChesney builds a most convincing case that media conglomeration, de-regulation and "hypercommercialism" are having a devastating effect on participatory democracy. Media ownership is more concentrated than ever -- reaching oligopolistic proportions -- and serious coverage and debate of public issues (war, taxes, corporate crime, education, and pollution etc.) is disappearing right before our eyes.

McChesney brillantly shows the important relationship between our media condition and the broader neo-liberal ecomomic order that's destroying democracy worldwide. But he also argues that it doesn't have to be this way.

Our media system is the result of deliberate man-made policy not devine intervention. The radio and television airwaves in the US are PUBLICLY owned and can be reclaimed from the media elite. McChesney lays out some valuable suggestions for media reform that deserve a serious look from anyone concerned about the decay of the media and democracy.

I am a graduate student researching the political structure (or political economy) of the media, and have found the works of Robert McChesney to be very influential for my studies. Here he analyzes how the corporate control of the modern media affects American democracy, and his insights into these areas are both illuminating and shockingly obvious, with a real knack for bringing out common sense enlightenment in understanding the nonsensical behavior and structure of the media. McChesney strongly argues that the media is the one industry most closely connected to the democratic health of the nation, because a democracy functions best when the citizens are well informed. Thus public, and not private, control of the media is a necessity. However, the corporate media system, dominated by well-connected elite mega-conglomerates, is actually the type of hyper-commercial oligopoly that is structurally unable (and unwilling) to give the masses true democratic choices and knowledge. McChesney's theories into how this has damaged the political health of the American people are obvious and depressing.

McChesney is also an outstanding political scientist, as he competently analyzes all sides of communications politics, from America's long-standing democratic traditions to our current ruinous domination by neoliberalism (economics) and neoconservatism (politics). One of this book's most fascinating chapters analyzes the highly troublesome hijacking of the First Amendment by the media conglomerates. Note that this particular book was published in 1999, so the chapter on the possibilities of the internet for democratic communications has become outdated (though McChesney's cynical attitude toward those possibilities has sadly become true). However, the underlying strength of McChesney's work is his focus on the structural issues behind the modern media and their very worrisome effects on public knowledge and democracy. Note that the "structuralist" arguments make up a portion of this volume, but have since been expanded in a hugely illuminating way in McChesney's exceptional 2004 release "The Problem of the Media." [~doomsdayer520~]

McChesney is concerned with probing the paradox that he finds in the continuing increase of various media in our lives with the depoliticization of the culture. He details the centralization and the conglomeration of the various media, such as film, broadcasting, cable, books, and internet providers into about six transnational media firms led by Time Warner, Disney, ViaCom, and Murdoch's News Corporation. All of these giants have moved to hyper-commercialism where through constant self-promotion and innocuous entertainment, especially sports programming, they deliver predictable, if not affluent, customers to advertisers. Little room is left for the non-commercial and public affairs programming that stimulates broad political participation.

He details the failure of reformers in the early 1930s to establish non-profit and public broadcasting terminating in the Communications Act of 1934. He shows that public broadcasting today has been forced to rely on advertising revenues and adopt programming that is largely indistinguishable from for-profit purveyors.

The rise of these media empires is a part of the neo-liberal, free-market, and globalization pattern of the 1980s and 90s. As part of the anti-regulation mantra, these firms cynically claim First Amendment rights to be uncensored (unregulated), which are meant to promote the widest dissemination of ideas through the press, to have a free hand in limiting and controlling the information content produced by their employees.

The book can get tedious in the extended detailing of media holdings or in following the various travails of the reformers in the early broadcasting days. In addition, the description of how the Internet is likely to fit in the media mix is poorly drawn, if not highly confusing, with ill-defined terminology. Beyond describing the reduction in differing views available to the public, this is not a book that attempts to ascertain the propagandistic effects of the oligopolistic media message.

McChesney's purpose is to convince those on the left to put media reform at the top of their lists. The media empires because of their strategic placement to affect public opinion are the front line troops for the corporate order. However, the position of the media to filter the flow of information concerning media reform and other leftist projects is not lost on the author. The book is unconvincing that media reform is anywhere on the horizon. Nonetheless, the power and the agenda of the media corporate giants can not be in doubt after reading this book.

This may be the most important book of the year for anyone concerned with the real world of democracy as we enter 2000. In a detailed, substantive but highly-readable study, McChesney explores how corporate control of the mass media shapes and constrains news and culture, sharply limits real freedom of the press, and hence undermines popular self-government. McChesney shows how growing corporate media concentration threatens the open system of communication and culture that is vital to democracy or rule by the majority. I know of no other book that cuts through the neo-liberal, market-idolatry of our time. Yet the author provides hope: imaginative, yet concrete ways in which citizens might contest the power of the corporate media and reclaim the best of our democratic heritage. A superb book, highly recommended.