Robert W. McChesney

Robert Waterman McChesney

The first paperback edition of a myth-breaking book on media, from one of today's most reputable and insightful media historian/critics. Winner of Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize, Rich Media, Poor Democracy challenges the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information "choices" is a democratic one. Robert McChesney, whom Marc Crispin Miller calls "the greatest of our media historians," argues that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are wealthy investors, advertisers, and a handful of enormous media, computer, and telecommunications corporations. This concentrated corporate control, McChesney maintains, is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy. Combining unprecedented detail on current events with historical sweep, in a book Noam Chomsky calls a "rich and penetrating study," McChesney chronicles the waves of media mergers and acquisitions in the late 1990s. He reviews the corrupt and secretive enactment of public policies surrounding the internet, digital television, and public broadcasting. He also addresses the gradual and ominous adaptation of the First Amendment as a means of shielding corporate media power and the wealthy, and he debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to "give the people what they want." In an eye-opening call to action, McChesney warns that we must organize politically to restructure the media if we want democracy to endure.

Communication Politics in Dubious Times

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

A collection of media criticism by a well-known voice in the field.

U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century

The Problem of the Media

the media revolution that will begin the world again

The death and life of American journalism

The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935

Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy

Noam Chomsky

La propagande est à la société démocratique ce que la matraque est à l'Etat totalitaire. Dans ce recueil de textes percutants - qui ont fait sa réputation comme analyste des médias - Noam Chomsky explique comment et pourquoi la démocratie libérale ne favorise pas l'existence de médias de masse libres et indépendants et, par extension, la participation des citoyens aux affaires publiques. Remontant à la naissance des relations publiques ou analysant la couverture médiatique de l'actuelle «guerre contre la terreur», le célèbre linguiste du MIT démonte les mécanismes de cette «fabrication du consentement» au service du monde des affaires. De son côté, Robert W McChesney nous fait comprendre en quoi les «géants des médias», résultant de la concentration de la propriété des moyens de communication, constituent une grave menace pour la démocratie. Au-delà de la désinformation, l'enjeu soulevé dans cet ouvrage est : dans quel type de société voulons-nous vivre ? Une démocratie véritable ou un totalitarisme déguisé ? Professeur émérite au MIT, Noam Chomsky est un intellectuel engagé qui s'est fait connaître par son analyse critique de la politique étrangère des Etats-Unis et des médias de masse. Robert W Mc Chesney, professeur de communication de l'Université de l'Illinois, travaille sur le rôle des médias dans les sociétés démocratiques et capitalistes.

Propagande, médias et démocratie

A provocative critique of media studies by the author of the award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy is a historical analysis that evaluates the communication revolution currently influencing twenty-first-century life, arguing that media scholarship has become increasingly irrelevant and requires new perspectives on the role and understanding of communication studies.

Critical Junctures and the Future of Media

Communication Revolution

In the United States and much of the world there is a palpable depression about the prospect of overcoming the downward spiral created by the tyranny of wealth and privilege and establishing a truly democratic and sustainable society. It threatens to become self-fulfilling. In this trailblazing new book, award-winning author Robert W. McChesney argues that the weight of the present is blinding people to the changing nature and the tremendous possibilities of the historical moment we inhabit. In Blowing the Roof off the Twenty-First Century, he uses a sophisticated political economic analysis to delineate the recent trajectory of capitalism and its ongoing degeneration. In exciting new research McChesney reveals how notions of democratic media are becoming central to activists around the world seeking to establish post-capitalist democracies. Blowing the Roof off the Twenty-First Century also takes a fresh look at recent progressive political campaigns in the United States. While conveying complex ideas in a lively and accessible manner, McChesney demonstrates a very different and far superior world is not only necessary, but possible.

Media, Politics, and the Struggle for Post-Capitalist Democracy

Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century

Chronicles the efforts of organized labor and in particular, Edward Nockels and the Chicago Federation of Labor, to establish an independent labor radio station.

WCFL and the Battle for Labor Radio Broadcasting, 1927-1934

Labor and the Marketplace of Ideas

William Samuel Solomon

Ruthless Criticism was first published in 1993. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Ruthless Criticism offers perspectives and subjects largely outside traditional historiography. It broadens the concept of media history to include lesser-studied media, and offers alternative interpretations of traditional media. This anthology of original research includes an array of scholarly and theoretical perspectives. Each addresses specific topic within a specific era. reflecting the diversity of U.S. mass media. Solomon and McChesney begin by using critical theory and deconstruction to examine the meanings of print in the colonial era. Subsequent chapters study the media ecology of the antebellum press; the intense focus on profits of the post-Civil War mainstream press; gender images in the labor press; the diversity of political views within the working-class press; and the development of a commercial press in the black community. The essays concerning the twentieth century focus on the rise of a culture industry and include studies on the origins of the broadcast ratings system and the commercial broadcast system and the commercial broadcast system, early television's portrayals of childhood, the televisions networks' close ties with the federal government, the government's key role in creating and developing the field of mass communication research, and teenage girls' popular culture from 1960–1968 as a formative influence on the feminist movement.

Robert Waterman McChesney

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