It's the Media, Stupid - Softcover

John Nichols; Barbara Ehrenreich; Ralph Nader; Paul Wellstone; Robert W. McChesney; Ehrenreich, Barbara; Nader, Ralph; Wellstone, Paul

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25 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583220291 ISBN 13: 9781583220290

Publisher: Open Media, 2000

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An argument for media reform, It's the Media, Stupid explores the takeover of U.S. media by transnational conglomerates and shows how journalism, electoral politics, entertainment, and the arts have suffered.

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From the Publisher:

PRAISE FOR IT’S THE MEDIA, STUPID

You hold in your hands a key to unlocking the corporate media chains that have shackled real freedom of the press and real democracy in this country for all too long. Use it!"
—Ralph Nader

"Congress has become so ‘safe’ and ‘centrist’ that most issues of importance to working men and women, people of color, rural residents and urban dwellers aren’t seriously discussed. Why? Because issues are condensed into ‘sound bites’ for mass consumption by targeting media constituencies in the broad middle and upper-class of consumers—the people who will buy what mass media advertises. The resulting neglect of debate around serious issues and opposing options is eating away at our democracy. John Nichols and Bob McChesney are right to argue that for our democracy to be renewed, issues of media ownership, monopoly and diversity must be on the agenda. Media cannot merely reflect the narrow corporate interests of a handful of powerful media moguls. For democracy to function, media must reflect the diversity of views, viewers and values of the whole of society."
—Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.

"I’ve been an organizer for three decades, on every issue from economic justice to civil rights to community empowerment to health care to gun violence. It doesn’t matter what the struggle is, people always complain about the media. What John Nichols and Bob McChesney are saying to us is this: We can do more than complain about the media, we can change it!"
— Horace Small, National Director, Democratic Socialists of America Past president, National Federation of Black Organizers

"With It’s the Media, Stupid! we move beyond a mere list of complaints about the commercial media system as it exists; we have an institutional analysis of the system that accounts for its hypercommercial and anti-democratic tendencies. John Nichols and Bob McChesney provide a careful description of the problem’s various manifestations, and lay out a blueprint for media reform. As they show, there are multiple complementary points of intervention in which critics, activists, teachers, reporters, parents, and people who just want better quality media and less crap all have roles to play."
—Janine Jackson, Program Director Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

"McChesney and Nichols have shown us what is possible; now it falls to all of us to realize that potential with our activism."
—Barbara Ehrenreich

"McChesney’s work has been of extraordinary importance...it should be read with care and concern by people who care about freedom and basic rights."
—Noam Chomsky

"John Nichols is a unique political writer in this country. He digs into politics, he gets to the heart of it, and he writes about what’s going on with a knowledge and a passion—and an optimism—that is exciting."
— U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, D—MN

"Robert McChesney is one of the nation’s most important analysts of the media."

— Howard Zinn

About the Author:

Heraled as a modern day Thomas Paine and "one of the nation's most important analysts of the media," McChesney has written or edited 8 books, including "Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy" and "Rich Media, Poor Democracy." He's a professor at the University of Illinois and hosts a weekly radio show on WILL-AM.

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