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Editorial Review Product Description
How American media are failing our democracy, by the authors Bill Moyers calls "the Paul Revere and Tom Paine of our time."
"As this book makes clear, the problem is deeper than the administration or the right-wing echo chamber…the very structure of our conglomerated media system conspires against real journalism and, hence, against truth."—Tim Robbins, from the Foreword
Thomas Frank called Tragedy & Farce "an appeal to reason in a dark time. " Including the sharpest analysis of 2004 election coverage yet and the first detailed look at the burgeoning media reform movement, this book is both an exposé and a call to action. In it John Nichols and Robert McChesney—two of the country's leading media analysts—argue that during the 2004 election and throughout the Iraq war and occupation, Americans have been starved of democracy's oxygen: accurate information. More than anything John Kerry, George Bush, or even Karl Rove did, the media's mis-coverage of the campaign and war decided the election. Most disturbingly, the flawed coverage reflects new, structural problems within U.S. journalism.
Tragedy and Farce dissects the media failures of recent years and show how they expose the decline in resources and standards for political journalism—as well as the methodical campaign by the political right to control the news cycle. In our highly concentrated media system it has become commercially and politically irrational to do the kind of journalism a self-governing society requires. 10 b/w illustrations. ... Read more Customer Reviews (10) 
Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
gooood
A national disgrace
The war is a tragedy and the media coverage of the 2004 presidential election was a farce.That is part of what Nichols and McChesney are telling us in this very readable and important book.More saliently they warn that unless the media reassumes its responsibility to tell the truth about how our government operates and about what it is doing that it hides from us, there is a danger that our democracy will be destroyed.
I have been hearing the lie about the "liberal bias" of the press for as long as I can remember.It is a lie told and retold, screamed and ranted about by the actual media powers that be, those who work for Sinclair Broadcasting, Clear Channel, Fox News--the entire Murdoch empire and more--the O'Reilly's, the Limbaugh's, the Ollie North's, the Scarborough's, the Beck's, the evangelical demagogues, the shrill shock jocks of AM radio, the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, and even some people working for the New York Times and the Washington Post.Behind these voices of deception are the conservative and controlling owners of our media and their corporate sponsors, people who merely want to massage and indoctrinate the populous into compliant couch potatoes who will buy their products and hail to the chief and not rock the boat.
Recently there have been a slew of books belatedly exposing this lie.Tragedy and Farce is yet another such tome, but in some ways it is among the best of the bunch.Nichols and McChesney take a historical perspective, showing how journalism has gone from 19th century Hearst jingoism to an eclectic array of publications in the heyday of the American press in the early 20th century to the docile and sycophantic reporters who work for today's mass media.An important and at times laugh out loud funny part of the book are the cartoons by Tom Tomorrow.His insightful satire and parody of our political elites and media mavens nicely complement the text.
But do Nichols and McChesney go far enough?They assert there is "a crisis in journalism" and they point to the recent consolidation of media, to the monopolistic franchises and subsidies that some media enjoy (p. 173) thanks to their financial, editorial, and news spin support of various politicians, especially those in the Bush Administration.They warn that "big media plays a well-marked role in defining the choices from which America's two major parties select their nominees for president." (p. 91) And they remind us that so tight is that media control that no third party candidate has more than a remote chance of ever becoming president.But what I would say is replace "big media" in the quote with "corporate America" and change "well-marked role" to "absolutely controlling role" and we are closer to the awful truth.
The plain fact is that we have a democracy by capitalism in this country, that there is no chance for any candidate to achieve the highest office who is not in the pocket of, and whose mind is not to some extent controlled by, the corporate structure that actually runs America.Big media is only one branch, albeit an essential one, of that structure.Until the mass media is non-commercial nothing will change.How could it?How can the average reporter go against the hand that feeds him or her?The authors note what happened to Phil Donahue at MSNBC when he "represented a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." (p. 86)He was cancelled.If Donahue cannot go against his bosses how can we expect the reporter on the beat to write what he knows Murdoch or the corporate sponsors do not want to hear?
Apropos is this delicious quote from Theodore Dreiser: "The American press, with very few exceptions, is a kept press.Kept by the big corporations the way a whore is kept by a rich man."(p. 93)
The worst of all the big offenders of course is Fox News and their Orwellian "fair and balanced" slogan.Yes, ignorance really is strength (that is, the ignorance of the populous) and the bigger the lie the better.Noting that Fox News was "actually more gung-ho in its support of the war than US government entities like Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty" the authors quote Russ Baker as saying that the Fox News Channel is "a kind of Gong Show of propaganda." (p. 86) (Yeah, but not nearly as funny.)
The authors call "repugnant" the notion that "the great unwashed mass needs to be bathed in a cocktail of propaganda and lies, decontextualized half-truths, and jingoism..." (pp. 85-86) But what is even more insightful is to realize that in creating a compliant, ignorant, indoctrinated and sloganized electorate, the last thing you want is for them to be told the unpleasant truth, and so you have to lie.Having created the sheep, you don't want to apprise them of the wolves, the shearing, or the slaughterhouse.
One final quote: "The years of the Bush presidency will be remembered as a time when American media, for the most part, practiced stenography to power..." (p. 84)
Read this book, by all means, and work toward the de-commercialization of media because only when those who have the responsibility and privilege of addressing mass audiences are free to tell the truth will we as a people be free.
Disappointed by Book
I was disappointed by this book.
While generally sympathetic to its conclusions, I was expecting a systematic examination of exactly what the title purported to promise, namely, "How the American Media Sell Wars..."
Instead what I got was a broad hodge-podge of sweeping statements that oftentimes read like a blog post -- of over two hundred pages.
The authors seem to realize this when at the conclusion of the critical 2nd Chapter titled "The Crisis in Journalism", they write:
"We concede that this has been a sweeping discussion of journalism, and we have had to use broad brush strokes.We believe our core argument survives more detailed examination, and it would certainly be qualified and enriched by more detail and nuance." (p.35)
This level of examination doesn't stop them in the very next chapter from "drawing upon the foundation laid in chapter 2" as if sweeping assertions in one chapter could support sweeping assertions in the next without ever having to come back down to planet earth to have a closer look.
The book is completely riddled with un-sourced and undocumented conclusions which you either agree with or not but which the authors simply announce without bothering to prove.
The situation in newsrooms "is not unlike the newsroom in Pravda or Tass in the old Soviet Union" (p.32).Media coverage of Colin Powell's speech at the UN "could not have been exceeded by Stalin's stooges" (p.59).While all of this sounds great, you're entitled to wonder in a book that places so much emphasis on journalistic standards what exactly the authors know about Pravda, Tass or "Stalin's stooges".
In sum, this isn't a book that's particularly strong from a journalistic or research standpoint.The conclusions might make you happy but you're none the wiser as to the reasons why.The fact that magazines like The Nation, In These Times or Mother Jones haven't reviewed it also isn't a good sign.My copy is going straight into the trash.
Biased, Blindly Written Piece of [...]
I thought this book would be more representative of the sensationalist reporting the media has been shoving down the throats of Americans for the last few years.Instead, this book essentially says there is not enough of this over-sensationalized baloney, and it begs that the media produce more in the name of our founding fathers.
If you dare to go there, check this out from the library.This drivel is not worth your hard earned money.
Important topic, biased presentation
Most of the previous reviews give a fairly accurate description of this book.
There is less hard news and more soft news now.There is increased concentration
of media power, fewer firms with many more outlets. There are far fewer foreign
bureaus and reporters.There are more opinions presented as news. This is bad
and I agree.
The bulk of the book is examples of how the media misbehave, and that is the
weakness.Almost all the examples show a strong liberal bias. Media concentration
has been going on for decades, with much of it during Clinton's terms, but it is
all blamed on Bush(43). Most of the references to Republicans, GOP, conservatives,
media corporations, and other corporations include a negative adjective, often
"lying" or "corrupt".The media should check the claims of the right, for they
always lie.There were no calls to doubt the claims of the left. At least there
was no claim that the left never lies.But it was close.Everything the Swift
Boat Veterans said was wrong.Everything Rather said was true; the only mistake
CBS made was picking the wrong evidence to present.There is no liberal bias
in main stream media.The main stream media has a very strong conservative bias,
except for FOX which is even worse.
Even liberals that want to believe all the accusations, can not use the book as a
reference in their battles with conservatives.There is no index to find the
accusation you want to use. There is a six page bibliography, but no notes in the
text to find the source, nor notes in the bibliography to refer back to where
the information was used.
The last chapter tells how to try to correct this bad situation. It shares the
bias weakness. There are references to organizations that are working to correct
some of the media problems, such as moveon.org and FAIR. Apparently, no conservative
thinks there is any problem with the media.
The star rating is an average.The book is worth five stars for the importance of
the topic, but only one star for the presentation.There are better books about
problems with the media. There are better books about the evils of big business.
There are even better "I hate Republicans" books.
... Read more
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