Robert McChesney and John Nichols on The Death and Life of American Journalism

[democracy1st]

Run time: 10:02 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb8eKHbjcvo   Posted on YouTube: February 04, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 05, 2010 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 721

 
Robert McChesney and John Nichols on The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again

University of Illinois Professor Robert McChesney and The Nation correspondent John Nichols, two leading advocates of the media reform movement, join us to talk about their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again. McChesney and Nichols argue that journalism should be seen as a public good and that the government should help save American journalism by granting more subsidies to newspapers and media outlets.

Transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/4/robert_mcchesney_and_john_nichols_on


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

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-American-Journalism-Revolution/dp/1568586051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265349002&sr=8-1




http://www.freepress.net/

[EFerrari]

1. Watching now. Thanks!

[20score]

2. Hope this gets rec'd to the top spot. Very important.

Just read this story in The Nation and will buy the book. The more people that see this, the better.

[JDPriestly]

3. I don't think much of journalists.

Most of them do not know enough about history and culture to write anything interesting or challenging.

The major local newspaper in L.A., like so many others, completely lost my trust because of its uncritical reporting on the Bush administration (the Iraq War for example). I and many other readers, I am sure, were disappointed to see how long the L.A. Times delayed in reporting on the Downing Street Memos. And then when the Times finally did report on it, the article was relegated to the inside pages. The propaganda supporting the war of course appeared on the first page.

Recently, the L.A. Times has continued to report with a viciously right-wing view.

I want a newspaper that simply reports the news in the front pages and saves the editorializing to the back pages. Unfortunately, the L.A. Times does not seem capable of even publishing a headline on any controversial subject that does not immediately color the article with a point of view -- usually a right-wing point of view. And why? Because their journalists do not know enough about history or what is going on to simply report facts.

I prefer to read blogs and news items written by scholars, by people with specialized knowledge in a field, people who don't try to write about health care and insurance issues and Iraq and Israel and Brazil, people who express opinions -- but only about things they really understand thoroughly.

So, if I want to know what is going on in business or economics, I want to read something by Krugman or a person who works for a company, or a person who has worked on Wall Street. I don't want to read articles written by reporters who talk to one expert and then another and then write an article that garbles the information provided by the experts. For example, if I want to read about the fraud on Wall Street, I read something by Elliot Spitzer -- who as Attorney General of New York put fear into the hearts of cheats on Wall Street. I don't want to read some watered down article that quotes Spitzer for a couple of lines and then quotes the CEO of a big bank for numerous paragraphs. (Quoting them in that proportion because, after all, the big bank is an advertiser).

Journalism is suffering because journalists are usually writers who really don't know what they are talking about. Because they just write about things they often don't really understand, they get into a lot of trouble. The "reporters" who allowed themselves to be "embedded" among the troops in Iraq are an example of the problem. They were writers -- and they were allowed to accompany soldiers. They wrote what the military wanted them to write. They didn't stop to ask about the basic assumptions of the war. Their were not educated to ask deeper questions. The press is sinking in its own superficiality.

[20score]

4. I agree with you about the nature of the problem, but not the cause. Journalists do not decide

what page their story is written on, or even if it is printed. That is the at the discretion of the editors and owners. (Media consolidation causes the vast majority of the problems you addressed.)

Personal experience: Aaron Clavel does not understand how to think critically. He confused challenging congress's modern anti-science attitude with all anti-science from the 1600's. I also ran into a reporter from Channel 5 News during a 2003 protest in LA; he was very obviously pro-war. This reporter told me about a poll that I could not possibly have heard about - as it had come out that morning a few hours earlier - that proved the Iraqis wanted the war. I was caught off guard, as he expected I would be. As I found out when I was able to read about the actual poll, if he hadn't lied, I would have been able to destroy him in a debate.

The point is that although there are far too many journalists that don't know how to think critically, or in some cases at all for that matter - not to mention those that sell their to reputations to the highest bidder - (all Media Corps employees) you can not blame the employees of this industry any more than you can blame the attendant at McDonald's for the amount of trans-fat.