Review
"Patrick Lawrence, as witty and cunning as they come, has written both a rapturous and knife-wielding history of journalism in the post WWII days of America's containment. His love for our flawed profession and his delight in having been in the mix of it makes his regrets and criticisms ring with only the best of intentions.. It also is a hell of a lot of fun to read." ―SEYMOUR HERSH
"Patrick Lawrence has written an outstanding, eloquent book about journalism. It is angry and bracing and wise, and it gives us hope. It says the subversion of much of our craft to raw propaganda is not yet complete and a 'Fifth Estate' of independent truth-tellers is rising. One truth is enduring: that we journalists are nothing if not servants of people, never of power." ―JOHN PILGER
"This richly evocative book masquerades as the memoir of a globe-trotting foreign correspondent. At heart it is much more: the poignant story of how an idealistic reporter watched his beloved profession collapse. This is a vivid account of how American journalism degenerated into public relations, what effect that has had on our democracy, and what we can do about it." ―STEPHEN KINZER
"Today, American mainstream journalism has lost all credibility due to its role as an agent of power. From a long personal effort to see and tell the truth in both mainstream and independent news outlets, Patrick Lawrence makes an eloquent plea for the revival of honest journalism able to bring Americans into the diverse world of the 21st century, a world of understanding and mutual respect rather than arrogant attempts to assert U.S. will. His hope lies in the determination of journalists themselves to assert their own inner integrity, to find their true selves by devotion to the truth." ―DIANA JOHNSTONE
"A vital, timely book to understand what's long been wrong with establishment media, which has grown far worse since 9/11. Reporters live vicariously through the powerful people they cover, failing to grasp the greater power they hold to cut the powerful to size. Corporate journalists promote a US foreign policy agenda rather than portraying the drama of international conflict with no dog in the fight. Having worked in mainstream journalism as Patrick Lawrence, and having experienced the divided-self he so well describes in these pages, his work resonates with reporters who've taken refuge in independent media. Would that more corporate reporters, pushed by the independents, have the conscience to understand Lawrence and free themselves, and the public." ―JOE LAURIA
"For anyone who takes seriously the Jeffersonian assertion that a free press is the essential condition of a government of the free, this quite brilliant and thankfully pithy alarm bell of a book by veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Lawrence is an indispensable read. A joy to read by a master of the craft of literary journalism honed over decades writing for the sophisticated audience of the International Herald Tribune and others who took the fate of the world seriously. Lawrence is surprisingly optimistic about the prospect for a new generation of working stiff journalists to salvage this indispensable craft despite or because of the wild wired world of the internet." ―ROBERT SCHEER
"Patrick Lawrence draws from a lifetime of hard-won experience and wisdom to chronicle, eulogize, and resurrect the spirit of an American journalism dedicated to the truth. Journalists and Their Shadows is a sober and heartening read in these cataclysmic times!"―AARON GOOD
"Patrick Lawrence’s cri de coeur leaps out of decades of variegated – often painful – personal experience in the trenches. He confronts his Jungian "shadow" with disarming honesty and challenges fellow journalists to integrate their own into an “undivided self” able to resist pressure to conform. Gentle with the scalpel, Lawrence points to hopeful signs that integrity may one day rescue the profession." ―RAY MCGOVERN
About the Author
Patrick Lawrence is an author, essayist, and lecturer. He was previously a correspondent abroad for International Herald Tribune. He now writes foreign affairs commentary for a variety of publications. His previous books include Japan: A Reinterpretation (Pantheon; NYT Notable Book, Overseas Press Club Award), Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post–Western World (Pantheon; a Globalist Top 10 Book), and Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale; a Globalist Top 10 Book, L.A. Book Festival, honorable mention).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
WHEN WE LOOK BACK NOW on the excesses of the Cold War decades― those few of us inclined to look back―it is commonly with some combination of contempt and derision. Or we simply marvel, without wondering why, at the spectacle of a nation tipped inexplicably into a terrible foolishness. Joe McCarthy’s anti–Communist inquisitions, the fallout shelters and civil-defense drills, the loyalty oaths and compulsive patriotism, the blacklists: We presume that we hold the wisdom of the decades as we consider those intemperate times: the past was evil but the evil has passed; they did things differently back then.
I lived through the Cold War but for its very first years, and my memories remain vivid. It is the hysteria in the press and over the broadcast waves that lingers most in my mind. These things have left scars that do not fade with time, and in this I cannot be alone. This hysteria was at its highest pitch during the nineteen fifties and some of the sixties. The major dailies and the broadcasters gave that time its texture and timbre. They delivered the Cold War to our doorsteps, to our car radios, into our living rooms. They defined our consciousness. They told Americans who they were and what made them American and altogether what made America, America. A free press was fundamental to this self-image, and Americans nursed a deep need to believe they had one. Our newspapers and networks went to elaborate lengths to give this appearance of freedom and independence. That this was a deception―that American media had surrendered themselves to the new national security state and its various Cold War crusades―is now an open-and-shut matter of record. I count it among the bitterest truths of last seventy-five years of American history.
I do not think, and haven’t for a long time thought, that we have any ground to recall our media’s Cold War derelictions from a position of distanced superiority―as if its current state has significantly improved since then. To the contrary. Our press and broadcasters remain in crisis, and it is startling to find how faithfully they repeat the lapses and betrayals of those earlier decades. From Jefferson’s day to ours it has been well understood that a democratic polity requires an informed public and an informed public requires a vital and genuinely free press. We no more have such a press now than we had one during the worst of the Cold War years. Many Americans, still possessed of the need to believe they have
