“Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy”, by James Fallows

 

296 pages, Pantheon, ISBN-13: 978-0679442097

While first published way the hell back in 1996, James Fallows’ Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy is still sadly (pathetically) all too relevant even today. His account of contemporary American media is a painstakingly detailed and thoughtful dissection of how, where and why the media has gone awry. In his careful deconstruction of the MSM, he explains how the politicization of the news is not necessarily a result of an increasingly corrupt public sector, but rather as a result of media celebrities incapable or unwilling to keep up with the very news they’re reporting. He also discusses at length the buying of journalists (through the pundit lecture circuit) and the disenfranchisement of the American people from their government as a result of the media’s partisan irresponsibility.

Farrows looks not only at contemporary circumstances, but examines the history which led us to this point, and how technology, money and the expansion of available knowledge at such an accelerated pace serve to encourage a waning of professional ethics on the part of the media. He also looks at how a media lacking credibility which chooses to focus on issues tangential to the public interest undermines the American public and the objectives of American democracy. The majority of this book helped to quantify a lot of what was bothering me about the press, then and now. Something just didn’t feel right, and while I could explain some of it, I was at a loss to put into words just what was bothering me. This book really helped to bring clarity to my intuition, with the added bonus of some awareness of some things that I hadn’t noticed.