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The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas
The influence of media on society is unquestioned. Its reach penetrates nearly every corner of the world and every aspect of life. But it has also been a contested realm, embodying class politics and the interests of monopoly capital. In The Political Economy of Media , one of the foremost media critics of our time, Robert W. McChesney, provides a comprehensive analysis of the economic and political powers that are being mobilized to consolidate private control of media with increasing profit — all at the expense of democracy.
In this elegant and lucid collection, McChesney examines the monopolistic competition that has created a global media that is ever more concentrated and centralized. McChesney reveals why questions about the ownership of commercial U.S. media remain off limits within the political culture; how private ownership of media leads to the degradation of journalism and suppression of genuine debate; and why corporate rule threatens democracy by failing to provide the means for an educated and informed citizenry. The Political Economy of Media also highlights resistance to corporate media over the last century, including the battle between broadcasters and the public in the 1920s and 1930s and the ongoing media reform movement today. The Political Economy of Media makes it clear that the struggle over the ownership and the role of media is of utmost importance to everyone.
In this elegant and lucid collection, McChesney examines the monopolistic competition that has created a global media that is ever more concentrated and centralized. McChesney reveals why questions about the ownership of commercial U.S. media remain off limits within the political culture; how private ownership of media leads to the degradation of journalism and suppression of genuine debate; and why corporate rule threatens democracy by failing to provide the means for an educated and informed citizenry. The Political Economy of Media also highlights resistance to corporate media over the last century, including the battle between broadcasters and the public in the 1920s and 1930s and the ongoing media reform movement today. The Political Economy of Media makes it clear that the struggle over the ownership and the role of media is of utmost importance to everyone.
589 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2008
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About the author
Robert W. McChesney
52 books103 followersRobert Waterman McChesney was an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He was the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He co-founded the Free Press, a national media reform organization. From 2002 to 2012, he hosted Media Matters, a weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on WILL (AM), Illinois Public Media radio.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2022
This is by far one of the most boring and poorly written books I have read. Rather than presenting a narrative, an organized collection of chapters building up to a central theme, or at the very least a loose compilation of different topics related to the field, the book appears to be a number of McChesney's drafts of the exact same article, printed at least 18 times over. Entire sets of consecutive paragraphs appear to have been directly copied from prior articles in a blatant process of ad nauseum self-plagiarism, resulting in the experience of reading the exact same quotes (subject to almost identical surrounding commentary) upwards of a dozen times.
Of the remaining 5 or so chapters that constitute the book, fully two were of actual interest (and again subject to the same self-plagiarism that plagues the rest of the chapters; in a book with 500 pages, this constitutes less than 10% of what's written). Another was an extremely dry (and extraordinarily unnecessary) chapter on the relationship between media and sports, which does not appear to fit in anywhere with the rest of the chapters.
Throughout all of this one encounters an absolutely obscene number of printing and spelling errors. The copy-editing was so poor that I often wondered if the same paragraph was printed twice in a row, or if I was looking at a printing error. In some sentences, words were simply omitted--I often debated whether or not it was even worth trying to fill in the blanks, because the odds that the sentence would convey a new concept that hadn't already been rehashed a dozen times prior were, in my experience, quite low. An entire page was actually missing from the book and I needed to reach out to the publisher to find out what it had said (this was back around page 40 when I was still naive and young and thought that perhaps I would find something useful here, before I became the greying old man I transformed into by the time I finished slogging my way through this).
Overall disappointing, a disappointment that is only exacerbated by the fact that my views occasionally overlap with the author's. Numerous occasions arise for McChesney to make policy recommendations--sometimes intentionally designated as such--on almost all of these occasions, the opportunity is squandered because the results do not appear to be fully fleshed out. The analysis stops short almost every time, and had as much effort been invested in actually taking things to their natural conclusion as was invested in reprinting the same idea over and over again, McChesney may have been able to exploit the potential to offer an insightful and structural critique of the present system. Instead, he opts to make sweeping proclamations about how the "left" (this ever-changing amorphous ensemble of predominantly liberals) are doing it wrong: formulated just articulately enough to be plausible, but never actually giving the argument the support it needs to be taken seriously.
Of the remaining 5 or so chapters that constitute the book, fully two were of actual interest (and again subject to the same self-plagiarism that plagues the rest of the chapters; in a book with 500 pages, this constitutes less than 10% of what's written). Another was an extremely dry (and extraordinarily unnecessary) chapter on the relationship between media and sports, which does not appear to fit in anywhere with the rest of the chapters.
Throughout all of this one encounters an absolutely obscene number of printing and spelling errors. The copy-editing was so poor that I often wondered if the same paragraph was printed twice in a row, or if I was looking at a printing error. In some sentences, words were simply omitted--I often debated whether or not it was even worth trying to fill in the blanks, because the odds that the sentence would convey a new concept that hadn't already been rehashed a dozen times prior were, in my experience, quite low. An entire page was actually missing from the book and I needed to reach out to the publisher to find out what it had said (this was back around page 40 when I was still naive and young and thought that perhaps I would find something useful here, before I became the greying old man I transformed into by the time I finished slogging my way through this).
Overall disappointing, a disappointment that is only exacerbated by the fact that my views occasionally overlap with the author's. Numerous occasions arise for McChesney to make policy recommendations--sometimes intentionally designated as such--on almost all of these occasions, the opportunity is squandered because the results do not appear to be fully fleshed out. The analysis stops short almost every time, and had as much effort been invested in actually taking things to their natural conclusion as was invested in reprinting the same idea over and over again, McChesney may have been able to exploit the potential to offer an insightful and structural critique of the present system. Instead, he opts to make sweeping proclamations about how the "left" (this ever-changing amorphous ensemble of predominantly liberals) are doing it wrong: formulated just articulately enough to be plausible, but never actually giving the argument the support it needs to be taken seriously.
August 25, 2008
A long but meticulously and richly informative and inspiring book from one of my favorite authors and a big inspiration in my own life. Read this book and act on it.
July 21, 2019
Author believes in the panacea of government funded media..he thinks that they could produce better journalism. he is dead wrong. plus he is apparently not living in the same planet as most of us.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews