Hot Picks Suggested Reading

If you are interested in learning more about media and democracy, check out the following books:

We The Media: A Citizens' Guide To Fighting For Media Democracy
edited by Don Hazen and Julie Winokur, The New Press, 1997

If you only get one book, this is the one. Inspired by the first-ever Media and Democracy Congress held in San Francisco March of 1996 and the more recent Congress in New York City, it is packed with articles by over 100 leading journalists and media critics on media ownership and concentration, commercialization, content, access, and future trends. Energizing suggestions and a healthy list of progressive media organizations, from community radio (yes, TC's WNMC is listed), to Progressive Pulbicists, Media Literacy organizations, Youth Groups, and "Sources for the Web-Hungry" round out this important survival guide.

Culture Inc.: The Corporate Takeover Of Public Expression
by Herbert I Schiller, Oxford University Press, 1989

Schiller, Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of California, combines brilliant thinking with persuasive, clear writing in this slender volume. If you really want to understand how corporate growth has invaded cultural space, resulting in the pervasive manipulation of consciousness and narrowing of public discourse and access, this is a must read. His scholarship is impeccable and the message is powerful.

Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis In America
by Herbert I. Schiller, Routledge, 1996

Again, Schiller combines cogent analysis with clear, direct prose, in this rapid history of cultural and informational institutions in the U.S. over the last half century. He identifies the underlying drives of privatization, deregulation, and commercialization that have caused us to lose our sphere of public discourse. His concluding prediction about the possibilities for future change is particularly thought-provoking and hopeful in an unexpected way. And he manages to do all this in 143 pages.

Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost Of Sidelining Women In Reporting
by Laura Flanders, Common Courage Press, 1997

Flanders, director of the Women's Desk at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) offers a compilation of essays and interviews, drawn from her writing for EXTRA! (FAIR's magazine) and interviews conducted on "Counter Spin" since 1991. Nina Siegal, in her review of the book for The Women's Review of Books, writes: "Flanders' incisive exploration of the media's spin on the news and on so-called women's issues brings a refreshing clarity to some of the most perplexing questions of the day. . .[Her] essays also explore the 'backlash' against feminism and the manner in which 'women's issues' become distorted in the mainstream spotlight."

Wizards Of Media Oz: Behind The Curtain Of Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, Common Courage Press, 1997

A compendium of columns written by these two investigative journalists and colleagues at FAIR, this book is, as Studs Terkel remarks in his introduction, "an eye opener". Grouped together under chapter headings like, "Behind the Curtain", "The Myth of the Liberal Media", "'Public Broadcasting' Tunes Out the Public", "Affirmative Re-Action" and "Media Haves and Have-Nots, these revelatory essays expose the cozy (and poisonous) synergy between political leaders, media owners, reporters and pundits.

Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves Of Adolescent Girls
by Mary Pipher, Ph.D, Ballantine Books, 1994

Pipher, a clinical psychologist, claims that our "look-obsessed, media-saturated, girl poisoning culture" is causing adolescents girls to literally lose their sense of self. Building on the work of psychologist Alice Miller, who wrote in THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD of the pressures on some young children to deny their true selves and assume false selves to please their parents, Pipher argues it is now the culture itself that is forcing this split. Presenting the honest and pained voices of girls laying bare their day-to-day reality, living surrounded by media messages that sexualize, objectify and manipulate them, this book is a real call to action. And Pipher offers important strategies with which to "revivie these Ophelias' lost sense of self."

The Media Monopoly
by Ben H. Bagdikian, 5th edition, Beacon Press

First published in 1983 and now in its fifth edition, this book is a groundbreaking classic. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Bagdikian chronicles the relentless monopolization of corporate media ownership. Unfortunately, as each successive edition attests, the problem has only gotten worse as communications technologies have become more powerful. Once you understand how lethal this concentration of ownership is to the practice of true democracy, you too will be moved to support and demand more public access community media.

Return to the Index of Synapse 42, Winter 1997/98