"In this passionate and strikingly lucid essay, Robert McChesney makes clear why all of us should be alarmed about the effects of media mergers on the future of American democracy. This is a must reading for anyone who wants to get a quick understanding of this troubling trend."—Susan J. Douglas, author of Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich The corporate grip on the US media system means that journalism often parrots the views of those in power, and hypercommercialism puts profit above all else. The revised, updated and expanded edition of the now sold-out It's the Media, Stupid! chronicles the recent dramatic developments in media activism in the US and world-wide. Critiquing the US media system, the authors examine alternatives at work in other countries, and conclude with a proposal for meaningfully improving American media.
This book is a startling expose of the increasing threat to free speech a democratic government. Mazzocco describes the ways that an ever-expanding U.S.-based multinational media cartel velis the machinations of the corporate state by dominating worldwide markets for TV, radio, newspapers, books, movies, cable, recordings, and videos.
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: A (1,0), University of Agder (Political Science Fakultet for Okonomi og samfunn), course: Power, politics and the media, language: English, abstract: Immer wieder wird behauptet, dass unter dem Einfluss der weltweiten Globalisierung, die Inhalte der Informations- und Kommunikationsmedien nicht länger im Ermessen einzelner Anbieter liegen, sondern sich - synchron zur Verschiebung der Besitzverhältnisse von einzelnen Unternehmen zu einem globalen Netzwerk - verstricken zu einem eindimensionalen Produkt, in einer Branche, die von wenigen Medienkonglomeraten geleitet und beherrscht wird. Die vorliegende Arbeit überprüft und diskutiert die Behauptung, dass der zeitgenössische medial gesteuerte Informationsaustausch sich auf eine allgemeine Medienideologie konzentriert. Dabei wird der besondere Fokus auf die wirtschaftlichen Interessen der Medienunternehmen gelegt. Die Frage, die sich in diesem Kontext stellt, lautet, ob Medienkonzentration, sofern sie existiert, auch einen gewissen Nutzen hat oder ob sie schlichtweg eine Bedrohung der modernen Gesellschaft darstellt, indem sie demokratische Grundprinzipien einschränkt und unterdrückt.
In this chilling account of an America in political and cultural decline, media critics Cohen and Fraser show how mainstream media corporations have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America.
The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement. Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.
