Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Behind the flashy glitz of the ever-changing Internet and its promise of a brave new media, disturbing facts persist:
* Media mergers are rapidly creating one huge news cartel, with just five conglomerates now close to controlling most of what you see, hear and read. * These mergers further corrupt the news process by creating new conflicts of interest for journalists. * Mergers have forced many news organizations to go public, allowing Wall Street to demand higher profits every quarter. * This pressure to maximize profits is forcing news organizations to cut down on serious coverage of Washington and the rest of the world.
The result is drive-by journalism, an emphasis on entertaining people for quick profits rather than informing them for a stronger democracy. Serious journalism is being replaced by a newsamuse business that is causing widespread ignorance of public affairs and record voter apathy.
This allows elected officials to favor wealthy private interests that pay most of their campaign costs. Public demands (through polls) for reforms in campaign financing, health care, gun laws, tax policies, etc., are not answered.
Drive-by journalism has fostered widespread trashing of government, the destruction of politicians on unprovable charges, the shaping of politics to media needs and the swapping of political news for political ads. It also leads to exploitation of the First Amendment for commercial purposes, lets advertisers and publicists shape the news and tilts the media even further toward the privileged few.
From the Publisher
The dominance of corporate news media -- on the air and in print as well as the Internet -- means a narrowing of public discussion at a time when the number of news outlets has been proliferating at a rapid pace. Corporate sponsorship is homogenizing political commentary and tilting it increasingly toward one side, leaving roughly one-half of all Americans with less and less voice in the public forum.
If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, then news representing a wide range of sources and interests is the prerequisite to that vigilance. Yet the news business prefers to analyze everything but its own responsibility to maintain an informed electorate so vital to a free society.
It doesn't have to be this way. Amidst his chronicle of the destruction of the news, the author lays out a serious challenge to the news business to exercise its responsibility as well as its freedom.
Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know
Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know,Arthur E Rowse,Common Courage Press,1567511929,1993-2001,General,Politics and government,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Reference,Television - General,Television advertising,Television broadcasting of new,Television broadcasting of news,United States,Political Science / General
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