Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy

I first met James Fallows online in the early '90s, and then in person several times. For a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard grad, he was surprisingly in touch with the realities I knew as a moderate Westerner living in the East. He was kind enough to give me a copy of Breaking the News, and I found it to be a great read. It offered new perspectives and excellent explanations on the sorry state of today's journalism, far beyond the traditional but simplistic explanation of "liberal bias." Jim's perspective truly transcends the partisan and raises issues above the divisive fray that almost tragically seems to divide our great country. Although critics may contend that Jim offers a liberal apologist's view that liberal bias is not the primary problem (or even much of a problem at all), even my friends who are staunch conservatives should find little to disagree with and much to learn in "Breaking the News."

Appalled at the biases, distortions and omissions in the media, which have been worsening since 9-11, I recently launched on a campaign of study in regard to learning about the deterioration of the media and the influence of corporate control - and what we can do to counter it. This is one of the best, most informative and most readable of the six books on the subject I've read. I can't emphasize enough how important it is, how much our corporate-run media influence political thinking, decisionmaking and voting and influence not only the outcome of elections but the agenda and actions of politicians - and how motivated we need to become in order to counter it, to become informed about political realities rather than propaganda and myth, and as a country, to become more of a democracy and less of a plutocracy. The biggest difficult we face is that the media itself is not likely to publicize its own corruption, and is actively blocking attempts of people concerned with these issues inform the public. I also highly recommend the books on media disinformation and reform by Robert McChesney, including his mini-books Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy and Our Media, Not Theirs.

Few authors are as capable of approaching the unenviable task of explaining the otherwise baffling devolution in both the content and context of the mass media's coverage of the news as brilliantly as is noted journalist James Fallows in this literate, scathing, and thought-provoking broadside against his fellow journalists and the organizations they work for. By illuminating the specific circumstances attending the startling transformation in terms of the way news is viewed and covered by the media, he consistently gives readers reason for concern, and often for alarm. For example, Fallows contends that the viewing public increasingly distrusts the media because the public recognizes they can no longer depend on the media to provide the essential information citizens need to make sense out of current events and the world at large. In a carefully constructed look at how this has happened, Fallows masterfully describes how several aspects of media's coverage of the news has had the net effect of its become more of an effort to entertain and less an exercise in edifying and informing the public in an objective and disinterested fashion. As a result, the media increasingly presents public life in terms of a "depressing spectacle" rather than in its proper context as one of several vital aspects of a vibrant democratic experiment in progress. By concentrating almost exclusively on those more entertaining elements of the news involves conflict or controversy, the media offers us a glossy, superficial and profoundly inaccurate perspective of the often intricately complicated world outside our doors, and in the process makes the world even less comprehensible to those of us attempting to make sense of it all.Fallows argues that at least part of this process is propelled by the phenomenon of corporate acquisition of news agencies by large conglomerates whose concern for "the bottom line" has corrupted the news organization's fabled ability to maintain objectivity and disinterest. This results in concerns for competitive ratings, and a desperate attempt to compete with more traditional entertainment programs for audience share. As a result, news programs go for what is shocking, flashy, and provocative, so that "what bleeds, leads" the evening's news coverage. In a similar financial concern for confining costs, a plethora of quasi-news programs featuring "talking heads" featuring well known journalists like Robert Novak who ostensibly discuss the news but are actually offering their contrived punditry for our entertainment. In such a world dominated by a script requiring conflict and controversy, politicians are covered like sports stars, and all political actions, from attempts to pass healthcare legislation to decisions to bomb Iraq, are viewed strictly in terms of their consequence for the politicians involved and seldom discussed or debated in terms of their specifics or substantive elements. Yet clever pa

After reading this book, I subscribed to U.S. News & World Report just to see if James Fallows can change the world of print journalism (or at least his newly appointed corner of it). If anyone can, Fallows can. As evidenced in Breaking the News, he understands that integrity is more than honesty, idealism is more fulfilling than cynicism, and the public deserves better than talking heads. I can't imagine any thoughtful observer of politics or the media who wouldn't enjoy this thought-provoking book--or who wouldn't gain new insights into understanding how and why the system is broken

Have you ever read a newspaper's coverage of an election and momentarily thought you were reading the baseball box scores instead of a serious examination of crucial issues and choices? Have you ever wondered less about how California Governor Pete Wilson's handling of the "immigration issue" affected his Presidential prospects than about just what the "immigration issue" was exactly? Have you ever wondered how you could have watched a zillion hours of network nightly news on the politics of health care during 1993 and 1994 and still have no clue why millions of American children remain uninsured in 1997? In short, do you really care how Newt pays back the darn fine and whether the terms of Dole's loan to him are "commercially reasonable?"James Fallows's "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy" is a penetrating, cogent, and persuasive critique of the sorry state of American journalism in the mid-1990s. Fallows makes a convincing case for the proposition that the cynicism and detachment that the mainstream media so pride themselves on have not only devalued the quality of their journalism but have made it more difficult for Americans and their political leaders to deal constructively health care, entitlements, education, and the array of social issues demanding serious attention. In their relentless and superficial approach on the political spin of every issue--instead of its meaning to our lives--the media have actually harmed democracy by alienating the public from habits of democratic participation. Moving beyond mere criticism, Fallows advocates a "civic journalism" in which the media educate the citizenry and promote enthusiasm about involvement in public affairs. A responsible journalism can actually make democracy work. And Fallows's fine book is a shining example of just the approach he talks about.So turn off the McLaughlin Group and pick up this book. We'll all be better off if you did