Customer Reviews

Taking Journalism Seriously

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Professor Richard Reeb's work, Taking Journalism Seriously, offers its reader a great return on the time which one must invest in the serious study which this critical and most unconventional and ground-breaking analysis of the American press or media demands. Reeb's analysis of the journalistic enterprise stems from the Founders' (Jefferson's, Madison's and Hamilton's) premise that the media together constitute a political institution which serves a necessary political function; and which must be judged according to the extent to which it either impedes or facilitates the public's education in what Jefferson called the "true facts and sound principles" of our form of government. Judged in this light, the core problem of our media is not--as many have argued--their lack of what is called "objectivity." Rather, as Reeb shows, their core problem is their partisanship in the service of unsound or false political principles. In short, the media's core problem lies in their belief that through schooling the public in their "transcendent" dicoveries: to wit, that one can properly study politics only by studying it "scientifically" and that one can truly understand political speech only by understanding it "historically"; journalism will be able to lead all of us out of the "cave" of the harsh realities of the contentions between passionate and interested political partisans,and into the "sunlight" of a world from which those journalistic 'solvents" have removed all partisan contentions, conflicts, struggles and wars. As Reeb shows through his careful study of Walter Lippmann, the journalistic estrangement from final causation, that is, from the purposes, ends, aims or objectives of political life, necessarily falsifies political phenomena. After all, in politics, more comprehensively than in anything else, every art and every activity aims at the attainment of some good, and categorically to deny the existence of that aiming point--as "objective" journalism does--is necessarily to distort the political phenomena being covered. Similarly, Reeb shows that journalstic "historicism" (or the dogmatic assumption that all expressions of value are and can be nothing more than the reflections of the interests, times and places out of which they arose), necessarily distorts the political phenomema; leading as well to such a condescending journalistic neutrality or indifference to fundamental political quarrels that the grounds of the freedom of both the journalist and the citizen become obscured. Finally, and as is appropriate to a work which aims at the reconstitution of our media, Taking Journalism Seriously returns us to our Founders and to their most instructive efforts to constitute a "fourth estate" which is devotion to its proper work of reporting the true facts and more so articulating the sound principles of the public's business.

My name is Christina Tonseth -- one of the several people who proofread Dr. Reeb's book. I found Dr. Reeb's prose to be captivating and influential, and his subject timely and universal. Journalists vow to be objective in their reporting of events, but often that isn't the case; pure objectivity is impossible to achieve. 'Taking Journalism Seriously' is a must-read for all potential and current journalists trying to find a compass in the nasty world of politics.

One has to wonder why in an era of "objective" journalism public confidence in the news media is in steady decline. Mr. Reeb provides an answer that will change forever how one views the news media. The book throughly disects two media bombshells of the Vietnam War--CBS TV's The Selling of the Pentagon and the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. In both cases we see why "objectivity" isn't all we might think to be. Reeb then offers a basis for understanding modern journalism by examining the thoughts of two of its 20th Centruy icons, Walter Lippman and James Reston. Finally, the book provides us with the view of our Founders--Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton--and the perspective they thought essential for the press to adopt in protecting our constitutional system of government. This integrated view of the press and its role in a free society is sober and insightful. Highly recommended.

I have spoken to the author of this book, and I believe that he does know what he's talking about, and I have read the book. I think this is a great book...

In a scathing editorial in the Barstow Desert Dispatch on Febrary 14, 2007, Reeb blasted the local school district for allowing a Gay-Straight Alliance club to form at the school. Using self-referential logic, Reeb frequently puts quotes around words such as "tolerance" and "lifestyle" impugning their significance. He then indicates that equal access laws regarding High School clubs applied only to Christian organizations, and not to other groups. He fails entirely to objectively evaluate the culture of institutionalized bigotry and further maligns gay youth in an already hostile world.