This work shows in detail the emergence and consolidation of U.S. commercial broadcasting economically, politically, and ideologically. This process was met by organized opposition and a general level of public antipathy that has been almost entirely overlooked by previous scholarship. McChesney highlights the activities and arguments of this early broadcast reform movement of the 1930s. The reformers argued that commercial broadcasting was inimical to the communication requirements of a democratic society and that the only solution was to have a dominant role for nonprofit and noncommercial broadcasting. Although the movement failed, McChesney argues that it provides important lessons not only for communication historians and policymakers, but for those concerned with media and how they are used.

Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935

Humor & Entertainment

MCCHESNEY, Robert W.

Radio

Oxford University Press

This work shows in detail the emergence and consolidation of U.S. commercial broadcasting economically, politically, and ideologically. This process was met by organized opposition and a general level of public antipathy that has been almost entirely overlooked by previous scholarship. McChesney highlights the activities and arguments of this early broadcast reform movement of the 1930s. The reformers argued that commercial broadcasting was inimical to the communication requirements of a democratic society and that the only solution was to have a dominant role for nonprofit and noncommercial broadcasting. Although the movement failed, McChesney argues that it provides important lessons not only for communication historians and policymakers, but for those concerned with media and how they are used.

Business & Money

Industries

Argues that mass media has become a major anti-democratic force in the United States and worldwide

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (The History of Media and Communication)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University of Illinois Press

Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform?Prepared by thirty-three scholars and activists from more than twenty-five countries, Strategies for Media Reform focuses on theorizing media democratization and evaluating specific projects for media reform. This edited collection of articles offers readers the opportunity to reflect on the prospects for and challenges facing campaigns for media reform and gathers significant examples of theory, advocacy, and activism from multinational perspectives.

Strategies for Media Reform: International Perspectives (Donald McGannon Communication Research Center's Everett C. Parker Book Series)

Obar, Jonathan A.

Martens, Cheryl

Fordham University Press

Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform? Prepared by thirty-three scholars and activists from more than twenty-five countries, Strategies for Media Reform focuses on theorizing media democratization and evaluating specific projects for media reform. This edited collection of articles offers readers the opportunity to reflect on the prospects for and challenges facing campaigns for media reform and gathers significant examples of theory, advocacy, and activism from multinational perspectives.

Winner of Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize as well as the Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, Rich Media, Poor Democracy destroys 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,” maintains that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are no more than a handful of enormous corporations, and that this concentrated corporate control is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy. In a book that Noam Chomsky hails as a “rich, penetrating study,” McChesney combines historical sweep and unprecedented detail on current events as he chronicles the recent waves of media mergers and acquisitions, as well as 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 debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to “give the people what they want.”

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

The New Press

First published to great acclaim in 2000, Rich Media, Poor Democracy is Robert W. McChesney’s magnum opus. Called a rich, penetrating study” by Noam Chomsky, the book is a meticulously researched exposition of how U.S. media and communication empires are threatening effective democratic governance. What happens when a few conglomerates dominate all major aspects of mass media, from newspapers and magazines to radio and broadcast television? Since the publication of this prescient work, which won Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize and the Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, the concentration of media power and the resultant hypercommercialization of culture” has only intensified. McChesney lays out his vision for what a truly democratic society might look like, offering compelling suggestions for how the media can be reformed as part of a broader program of democratic renewal. Rich Media, Poor Democracy remains as vital and insightful as ever and continues to serve as an important resource for researchers, students, and anyone who has a stake in the transformation of our digital commons. This new edition includes a major new preface by McChesney, where he offers both a history of the transformation in media since the book first appeared; a sweeping account of the organized efforts to reform the media system; and the ongoing threats to our democracy as journalism has continued its sharp decline.

Humanity is on the verge of its darkest hour—or its greatest moment The consequences of the technological revolution are about to hit hard: unemployment will spike as new technologies replace labor in the manufacturing, service, and professional sectors of an economy that is already struggling. The end of work as we know it will hit at the worst moment imaginable: as capitalism fosters permanent stagnation, when the labor market is in decrepit shape, with declining wages, expanding poverty, and scorching inequality. Only the dramatic democratization of our economy can address the existential challenges we now face. Yet, the US political process is so dominated by billionaires and corporate special interests, by corruption and monopoly, that it stymies not just democracy but progress. The great challenge of these times is to ensure that the tremendous benefits of technological progress are employed to serve the whole of humanity, rather than to enrich the wealthy few. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols argue that the United States needs a new economy in which revolutionary technologies are applied to effectively address environmental and social problems and used to rejuvenate and extend democratic institutions. Based on intense reporting, rich historical analysis, and deep understanding of the technological and social changes that are unfolding, they propose a bold strategy for democratizing our digital destinybefore it's too late—and unleashing the real power of the Internet, and of humanity.

People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy

NICHOLS, JOHN.

Economics

Bold Type Books

Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone.
Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown.
In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who together founded the nation's leading media reform network, Free Press, investigate the crisis. They propose a bold strategy for saving journalism and saving democracy, one that looks back to how the Founding Fathers ensured free press protection with the First Amendment and provided subsidies to the burgeoning print press of the young nation.

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again

Reference

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Nation Books

American journalism is collapsing as newspapers and magazines fail and scores of reporters are laid off across the country. Conventional wisdom says the Internet is to blame, but veteran journalists and media critics Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols disagree. The crisis of American journalism predates the Great Recession and digital media boom. What we are witnessing now is the end of the commercial news model and the opportune moment for the creation of a new system of independent journalism, one subsidized by the public and capable of safeguarding our democracy.

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MCCHESNEY, Robert W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MCCHESNEY, Robert W.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MCCHESNEY, Robert W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935

Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (The History of Media and Communication)

Strategies for Media Reform: International Perspectives (Donald McGannon Communication Research Center's Everett C. Parker Book Series)

Strategies for Media Reform: International Perspectives (Donald McGannon Communication Research Center's Everett C. Parker Book Series)

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again