The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century

The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. Robert W. McChesney. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004. 352 pp. $45 hbk. 16.95 pbk. Media scholar Robert W. McChesney has written what is probably the most important of his several books on America's media monopolies and oligopolies. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century is a thought-provoking and comprehensive analysis of why corporatization of the media is so pervasive today, why it is fated to get worse if the public does not get involved, and why it is dangerous for both journalism and democracy. In this latest account McChesney has pulled together the most powerful conclusions and insights from his earlier books along with new evidence and renewed focus. McChesney wrote to the reviewer, "The Problem of the Media really culminates 20 years of research on media for me, at least with regard to domestic U.S. policies and systems." The manuscript's completion in late 2003 gave McChesney time to document and explain the unprecedented and successful grassroots uprising against the FCC majority's high-handed vote of 2 June 2003 which would have allowed greater cross-ownership and national market control by the largest media corporations. The uprising was the first hopeful development after decades of public apathy toward increasing media consolidation. McChesney was so encouraged by its success that he devotes his final chapter to what he calls "a remarkable and mostly unanticipated first step" toward public participation in national media policy making. In the preface, McChesney presents eight myths of the media. He then devotes his book to dissecting the eight myths, explaining their consequences for news coverage, and disproving them. This review's length is not adequate to discuss all eight myths, but the publisher offers the preface on the book's companion Website at www.mediaproblem.org, and it is well worth the few minutes it takes to download and read. The eight myths, McChesney says, encourage and protect "the corporateinsider hegemony over media policy debates and the lack of public participation" that has prevailed for so long in the United States. The book is built on McChesney's foundational observation: "The corporate domination of both the media system and policy-making process that establishes and sustains it causes serious problems for a functioning democracy." He notes that most media outlets fail to cover issues that are not in the interests of the national and international conglomerates that own them; that, in turn, has led to a marginalization of the poor and the working class because of their undesirability as a market for advertisers. …