General

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

An absolutely brilliant analysis of the ways in which individuals and organizations of the media are influenced to shape the social agendas of knowledge and, therefore, belief. Contrary to the popular conception of members of the press as hard-bitten realists doggedly pursuing unpopular truths, Herman and Chomsky prove conclusively that the free-market economics model of media leads inevitably to normative and narrow reporting. Whether or not you've seen the eye-opening movie, buy this book, and you will be a far more knowledgeable person and much less prone to having your beliefs manipulated as easily as the press.

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

The Little Book of Plagiarism

A concise, lively, and bracing exploration of an issue bedeviling our cultural landscape–plagiarism in literature, academia, music, art, and film–by one of our most influential and controversial legal scholars. Best-selling novelists J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown, popular historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, first novelist Kaavya Viswanathan: all have rightly or wrongly been accused of plagiarism–theft of intellectual property–provoking widespread media punditry. But what exactly is plagiarism? How has the meaning of this notoriously ambiguous term changed over time as a consequence of historical and cultural transformations? Is the practice on the rise, or just more easily detectable by technological advances? How does the current market for expressive goods inform our own understanding of plagiarism? Is there really such a thing as “cryptomnesia,” the unconscious, unintentional appropriation of another’s work? What are the mysterious motives and curious excuses of plagiarists? What forms of punishment and absolution does this “sin” elicit? What is the good in certain types of plagiarism?

Provocative, insightful, and extraordinary for its clarity and forthrightness, The Little Book of Plagiarism is an analytical tour de force in small, the work of “one of the top twenty legal thinkers in America” (Legal Affairs), a distinguished jurist renowned for his adventuresome intellect and daring iconoclasm.

The Age of Missing Information

“Highly personal and original . . . McKibben goes beyond Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message.”
——The New York Times

Imagine watching an entire day’s worth of television on every single channel. Acclaimed environmental writer and culture critic Bill McKibben subjected himself to this sensory overload in an experiment to verify whether we are truly better informed than previous generations. Bombarded with newscasts and fluff pieces, game shows and talk shows, ads and infomercials, televangelist pleas and Brady Bunch episodes, McKibben processed twenty-four hours of programming on all ninety-three Fairfax, Virginia, cable stations. Then, as a counterpoint, he spent a day atop a quiet and remote mountain in the Adirondacks, exploring the unmediated man and making small yet vital discoveries about himself and the world around him. As relevant now as it was when originally written in 1992–and with new material from the author on the impact of the Internet age–this witty and astute book is certain to change the way you look at television and perceive media as a whole.

“By turns humorous, wise, and troubling . . . a penetrating critique of technological society.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Masterful . . . a unique, bizarre portrait of our life and times.”
–Los Angeles Times

“Do yourself a favor: Put down the remote and pick up this book.”
–Houston Chronicle

We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People

"We the Media, has become something of a bible for those who believe the online medium will change journalism for the better." -Financial Times

Big Media has lost its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet. Now that it's possible to publish in real time to a worldwide audience, a new breed of grassroots journalists are taking the news into their own hands. Armed with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras, these readers-turned-reporters are transforming the news from a lecture into a conversation. In We the Media, nationally acclaimed newspaper columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make--and consume--the news.

Gillmor shows how anyone can produce the news, using personal blogs, Internet chat groups, email, and a host of other tools. He sends a wake-up call to newsmakers-politicians, business executives, celebrities-and the marketers and PR flacks who promote them. He explains how to successfully play by the rules of this new era and shift from "control" to "engagement." And he makes a strong case to his fell journalists that, in the face of a plethora of Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant.

Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media oligarchy that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it.

Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by, and for the San Francisco Bay Area."

Dan Gillmor is the founder of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enable and expand reach of grassroots media. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women And Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power Of Advertising

Jean Kilbourne first gained prominence in the 1970s as the maker of Killing Us Softly, a documentary that detailed how the images of women in advertising were destructive for women in real life. In the years since, her thesis hasn't changed much, but the evidence supporting it has accumulated at an overwhelming rate. One of the first points that Kilbourne makes clear in Deadly Persuasion is that advertising does influence people, which is why newspapers and magazines engage in cutthroat competition to convince corporations to place ads in their publications, on the principle that their readership consists of the most valuable demographic. What appear in those ads, though, are images that equate emotional well-being with material acquisition; encourage women--beginning in their teenage years--to work at preserving the one "right" look; and associate rebellion and independence with the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

Kilbourne is militant on these issues, and some readers may find her positions a bit too extreme, as when she lambastes ads that employ surre alism for imitating a drugged state of altered consciousness or when she declares that most sexual imagery in advertising is "pornographic," elaborating in such a way as to denigrate the very idea of casual sex. And, despite several attempts at grim sarcasm, Deadly Persuasion is ultimately rather humorless. Kilbourne's heart, though, is definitely in the right place, and her demonstration of the extent to which we allow corporations to shape our desires is truly eye-opening. --Ron Hogan

The average American views three thousand ads in one day. Yet remarkably, most of us believe we are not influenced by advertising. In this lively and shocking exposé, Jean Kilbourne reveals how deeply advertisers insinuate themselves into our daily lives. Advertisers do far more than influence our taste -- they manipulate our desires so that their products will become our closest friends.

Drawing upon twenty years of research and using hundreds of examples, Kilbourne reveals the true nature of our connection to the myriad products that advertisers sell to us. From the earliest days of our childhood to the mature years of our adulthood, advertisers encourage us to develop a relationship with things. Whether it is the ice cream that will comfort us when our blind date goes wrong, the nail polish that will make us feel wild, the car that carries us away from a boring spouse, or the wristwatch that is our true pride and joy -- the product promises us that it can be trusted when people let us down. But when we substitute things for people, we mirror the behavior of addicts -- dooming ourselves to return, unsatiated, to that pint of ice cream or new lipstick. This dynamic is nowhere more evident than in alcohol and tobacco advertising, where advertisers are explicitly promoting a relationship with an addictive substance. The next glass of wine can never love us back like a person does -- but with time, it can become the focus of all our emotions. This is exactly what alcohol advertisers want to happen, Kilbourne points out, for the alcoholic is the industry's best customer. No wonder, then, that such advertisers entice teenage consumers to take the first step in a lifelong relationship.

We are all at risk in this toxic cultural environment. But as Kilbourne shows, women and girls are at special risk. Because the psychology of women is so deeply rooted in relations with others, women are particularly vulnerable to the promise of a relationship with a product. Advertisers exploit this fact throughout a woman's life, from the onset of her teens, when she is susceptible to the lure of romance and rebellion in a cigarette advertisement, to her adult years, when she yearns for release through the promise of a chocolate binge or glamour through the next sip of a dry martini. That is why most ads aimed at women offer comfort, power, and gratification -- feelings that many women don't experience in their day-to-day lives. All of us, including women and girls, can learn to resist this kind of deadly persuasion; but in order to do so, we must first be attuned to advertising's methods and its messages.

Through her lectures and award-winning documentaries, Jean Kilbourne has alerted several generations to the dangers of advertising. Here, she brings her life's work together with the trademark intelligence, passion, and humor that have made her a national figure. A warning shot about the perils of the media and a call to resistance on the part of all women, parents, and educators, Deadly Persuasion is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of our culture. After reading it, none of us will ever look at ads -- or ourselves -- the same way again.

Secretos de impacto

El libro Secretos de Impacto ya no está disponible.

The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (The New Media World)

Have Gun Will Travel

No one more epitomized the world of gangsta rap than Suge Knight, the often brutal CEO of Death Row Records. Author Ronin Ro shows courage in detailing the frightening means used by Knight to corner the market on the most hard-core of urban music. It's a tale that reads like it was written by the bastard offspring of Horatio Alger and Quentin Tarantino. Knight's forceful style and legal entanglements have been the stuff of legend for years. Most music reporters, coming face to face with the thugs who enforced the rules at Death Row, have been afraid to tell the story. With Knight safely behind bars and Death Row in disrepair, Ronin Ro finally has the chance to put this violent soap opera in print.

Death Row Records is one of the most successful music labels of all time.  From its inception in 1992, it exploded on the rap music scene with sales climbing to the $125 million mark in just four years.  Even more noticeable than the label's financial success is the effect it had on American youth culture, making gangsta rap more popular with suburban white youth and MTV viewers than traditional rock groups.  But under the guidance of six-foot-four-inch, 300-pound CEO Marion "Suge" Knight, Death Row also became the most controversial record label in history--a place where violence, gang feuds, threats, intimidation, and brushes with death were business as usual.

Have Gun Will Travel details the spectacular rise and violent fall of a music label that had at its heart a ferocious criminal enterprise cloaked behind corporate facades that gave it a guise of legitimacy.  With inside access no other writer can claim, Ronin Ro, the country's preeminent rap journalist, exposes the facts everyone else is afraid to divulge--from the initial bankrolling of Death Row by a leader of L.A.'s notorious Bloods gang, to links with New York's Genovese crime family.  Have Gun Will Travel lays bare the full story behind this influential label, including the still-unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., as well as Suge Knight's rise to power, his fight with East Coast rap titans such as Sean "Puffy" Combs, and his eventual imprisonment.

Although it has been all over the news--from The Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone--this is a timeless story about an empire built on greed, corruption, murder, and exploitation.  With exclusive interviews and bloodcurdling eyewitness accounts, Have Gun Will Travel combines the behind-the-scenes fascination of books like Hit Men and Hit and Run with the violence and dramatic sweep of The Godfather, in a brilliant and blistering document of contemporary culture.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age (Communication, Media, and Politics)

Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media

On May 11, 2003, The New York Times devoted four pages of its Sunday paper to the deceptions of Jayson Blair, a mediocre former Times reporter who had made up stories, faked datelines, and plagiarized on a massive scale. The fallout from the Blair scandal rocked the Times to its core and revealed fault lines in a fractious newsroom that was already close to open revolt.

Staffers were furious–about the perception that management had given Blair more leeway because he was black, about the special treatment of favored correspondents, and most of all about the shoddy reporting that was infecting the most revered newspaper in the world. Within a month, Howell Raines, the imperious executive editor who had taken office less than a week before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001–and helped lead the paper to a record six Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the attacks–had been forced out of his job.

Having gained unprecedented access to the reporters who conducted the Times’s internal investigation, top newsroom executives, and dozens of Times editors, former Newsweek senior writer Seth Mnookin lets us read all about it–the story behind the biggest journalistic scam of our era and the profound implications of the scandal for the rapidly changing world of American journalism.

It’s a true tale that reads like Greek drama, with the most revered of American institutions attempting to overcome the crippling effects of a leader’s blinding narcissism and a low-level reporter’s sociopathic deceptions. Hard News will shape how we understand and judge the media for years to come.


From the Hardcover edition.