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

by Robert W. McChesney (Author) "The United States is in the midst of an almost dizzying transformation of its media system..." (more)
Key Phrases: global commercial media system, corporate media system, commercial media market, United States, First Amendment, Time Warner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Robert McChesney makes no bones about it: he is a democrat with a small "d," and in this book, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, that spells leftist. As a media scholar (McChesney is a communications professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), he is primarily concerned with "the contradiction," as he puts it, "between a for-profit, highly concentrated, advertising-saturated, corporate media system and the communication requirements of a democratic society." As a citizen, he favors resolving this contradiction through measures that would make your average CEO's skin crawl: massive government subsidies for nonprofit journalism, vigorous antitrust litigation aimed at media conglomerates, and robust regulation of corporate broadcasters.

If your politics lie anywhere to the right of Ralph Nader's, in other words, don't come to this book looking for validation. But for a stimulating, nuanced, and rigorously researched presentation of the case for overhauling the current media regime, look no further. McChesney displays a sure grasp of today's fast-evolving, high-tech mediascape, and his arguments about how to shape its future evolution (especially his critique of the now-prevalent idea that corporations deserve First Amendment rights) unfold with an often-startling common sense. Whether or not you agree with his prescriptions in the end, McChesney's sweepingly expansive notions of democracy--and of the importance of media within it--demand to be reckoned with. --Julian Dibbell

From The Industry Standard
Paradox beats close to the heart of revolutionary periods in history. At the beginning of his book about the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens famously observed that "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."

The same might be said of our own era. Certainly these days are the best of times in a lot of ways. A Gallup poll last January found that Americans' "overall satisfaction" stands at 69 percent - a record.

But some see a dark lining in the silver cloud of our prosperity. Perennial cyber-promoter Douglas Rushkoff came out last year with Coercion, a disturbing look at the threats to privacy lurking behind every door. In Code, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig warned of the invisible hand of those who build the Net's underlying structure.

Now comes Robert McChesney with Rich Media, Poor Democracy, which focuses on the paradox of today's media: the perception of choice vs. the reality of concentrated ownership.

McChesney is a research associate professor in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a leading member of that vestige of the old left called "media criticism," whence come many of the most dire warnings about current trends.

"This is an age of dazzling breakthroughs in communication and information technologies," McChesney observes. "Communication is so intertwined with the economy and culture that our times have been dubbed the Information Age."

As the title of his book implies, though, McChesney wonders if the modern-day boom in information channels doesn't simply give the illusion of democracy. The mass market has been broken into thousands of niches, but does freedom of choice equal freedom? McChesney says no.

Moving invisibly behind the rapid expansion of outlets is a disquieting and historic trend toward consolidation, he argues. "The striking structural features of the U.S. media system in the 1990s are concentration and conglomeration." The result, he adds, is that the media have become an antidemocratic force in America. As he sees it, "democracy is in a decrepit state."

He readily admits that his warnings of consolidation may sound more like a faint cry of "wolf" in the face of our present-day stampede of new Web sites, publications and TV stations.

"It may seem ironic that these are the dominant structural features when, to the casual observer, the truth can appear quite the opposite," he writes. "We seem inundated in different media, from magazines and radio stations to cable television channels, and now Web sites."

But if you look closely, he says, consolidation is pervasive. In the Internet Economy, for instance, there are ubiquitous affiliate programs, electronic commerce partnerships, navigators and mergers of historic magnitude as the recent AOL-Time Warner marriage.

Of course, McChesney is not the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of media monopoly. In 1822, James Madison wrote that "a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." In the 20th century, prominent media critics have included Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly), Noam Chomsky (Media Control) and Norman Solomon (The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media).

Consequently, McChesney's book might sound like a rehash of old arguments. While Rich Media, Poor Democracy continues down a well-worn path of media criticism, it nevertheless breaks important new ground.

For instance, McChesney points out that media concentration has traditionally been horizontal, but its modern form is vertical. For example, all but 16 of America's 148 widely distributed films in 1997 were produced by the six largest studios. That's horizontal concentration.

The shift to vertical integration means a studio like Walt Disney now controls not only the content, but also many of the stages before and after - movie studios, TV-program production facilities, cable channels, broadcast networks, broadcast channels, record labels, magazines, newspapers, book publishers, and the list goes on and on.

Vertical integration is why Disney toy figures start showing up in fast-food restaurants whenever the studi0 premieres a new film.

Not only is the average American oblivious to what's happening, McChesney says, the U.S. government is also tuning out. Regulators let mergers slide under tremendous pressure from the telecommunications and entertainment industries. He notes virtually no one in government is looking out for the public interest in the media field.

To explain their laxity, regulators almost invariably put forward the same answer: the Internet. How can you say there's consolidation, they reason, when there's so much growth on the Net? The Internet upends the rationale for regulating media mergers, McChesney adds, or for regulating media at all.

Once upon a time, the major media conglomerates possessed the only access to millions of Americans. Now, the argument goes, anyone with a few dollars can launch a Web site and compete with the media titans. McChesney wrote last year in The Progressive that "proponents of the Internet act as though