Capsule reviews of new books, films and magazines on media, culture, and democracy. Send review copies to Reclaim the Media, 927 22nd Ave, Seattle WA 98122.

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JUNE 07

The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government are Turning America into a Dictatorship by Elliot Cohen & Bruce Fraser [Prometheus] Cohen and Fraser's book is at its core an extended sermon condemning the Bush Administration's many excesses and abuses of power, and arguing that the concentrated power of corporate media has been actively complicit in the country's shift towards authoritarianism. The authors' political analysis is designed to rile up those who already agree with them, rather than to change new minds; Cohen and Fraser are at their best when they're adding new information to the debate, which unfortunately is not very often. Still, a useful compendium of connections between a range of media/communications issues and progressive critiques of Bush policies. -jl

MAY 07

Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence by Sonali Kolhatkar and Jim Ingalls [Seven Stories] buy online In this timely and much-needed volume, Kolhatkar and Ingalls fill in some of the appalling gaps in American popular understanding about Afghanistan, attacking our collective amnesia about the history of US intervention, the right wing’s cynical use of women’s liberation language, and media coverage typified by deep racism. At the book’s center is a highly insightful chapter analyzing the structural biases and omissions of US establishment media coverage of Afghanistan since the 1980s. -jl

When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston [Univ. of Chicago] buy online This book examines "the tendency of the [American] press to record rather than critically examine the official pronouncements of government" during the post-9/11 Bush administration. Despairing at this lack of press independence, the authors argue that the most important remedy for this trend is to revive public debates over the importance of public-interest journalism. Focusing deep analysis on several particular large stories - the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib and Katrina, the book argues that effective public-sphere standards of press accountability could have produced more analytical news coverage, giving people the knowlege and the will to have a greater influence on governmental action. -jl

APR 07

The Hip-Hop Education Guidebook Volume 1 by Marcella Runell, Tatiana Forero Puerta, and Martha Diaz [Hip-Hop Association]

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960's by Joe Boyd [Serpent's Tail] buy online

MAR 07

Remaking Media: the Struggle to Democratize Public Communication by Bob Hackett and Bill Carroll [Routledge] buy online A very insightful look at the recent rise of media activist organizations and networks in the US, Canada and the UK. Drawing upon extensive personal interviews with on-the-ground activist leaders, the authors provide a map of the current media democracy field, including successe, challenges, blind spots and potential vectors for development. The book’s transnational perspective allows for useful comparisons; highlights include chapters on San Francisco’s Media Alliance (US) and the Campaign for Press and Broadcast Freedom (UK). -jl

Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy by Marcy Wheeler [Vaster] buy online With her first book, blogger Marcy Wheeler exemplifies the very best contributions to civil discourse being made by nonprofessional commentators and researchers on the web. The book's task is at once simple and complex – narrating and deconstructing how the Bush Administration used cooked-up intelligence and the willing help of a few prominent DC journalists to mislead the country into the Iraq War. News coverage of the story turned some of its key players (Scooter Libby, Judith Miller, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Patrick Fitzgerald) into household names. But as happens too often in today's DC insider-beat journalism, reporters and networks lost sight of the truly big stories – how Federal Government officials pursued a policy of grand-scale public deception – and how some of the same officials cynically snuffed out the career of an undercover intelligence agent, as part of a political hit job. Instead, press coverage tended to repeat White House messages and frames, or treat the investigation into Plame's outing as an inconsequential game of tit-for-tat. In this environment, it was often progressive bloggers like Wheeler who regrounded the story in democratic values, including the very basic work of simply creating a narrative that ordinary folks can follow. By doing so, Wheeler has performed a valuable act of journalism – at the same time demonstrating how rare that can be in Washington DC these days. -jl

JAN 07

A Century of Media, a Century of War
by Robin Andersen [Peter Lang] buy online

read our full review of A Century of Media here.

Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America
by Mark Lloyd [Illinois] buy online

Activist and scholar Mark Lloyd’s first book is in large part a history of American democracy, viewed through the lens of the media and communications systems that (at their best) encourage and enable civic debate. From early postal subsidies and the creation of telegraph networks to contemporary debates over concentrated ownership and control of the Internet, US communications policy has always been contested ground, as democratic communications values battle it out against elite and commercial interests. Gleaning important lessons from this history of struggle, Lloyd argues that today we must organize a dramatic shift in communications policy in order to salvage our democracy. -jl

Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values
by Sharon Beder [Earthscan] buy online

Contemporary political life goes about its business under the spell of a whole collection of myths equating capitalism with democracy: Free markets are natural expressions of democracy, and pillars of freedom ... As more and more people become stock market investors, wealth is distributed more broadly in a 'shareholder democracy' ... Shareholders hold their corporations accountable to democratic values. Sharon Beder's new book goes beyond skewering these myths, and explores the history of public relations innovators and corporate propagandists campaigning to insert business priorities into the hearts and minds of America and the world. Beder argues that these decades-long campaigns, working through educational curricula, advertising and the mass media, have obtained considerable success in replacing democratic values of truth, justice and human rights with corporate values of consumption, competition, conformity and subordination to authority. An understanding of this history, Beder implies, is an important weapon for identifying, amplifying and creating educational and media tools to help break the spell and work for a true democracy. -jl

Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio's Civil War
by Matthew Lasar [Black Apollo] buy online

If you're a community media nerd or would like to become one, you'll be enchanted by the second of Matthew Lasar's chronicles of Pacifica Radio. In 1999, when Pacifica's national leadership pulled the network into a protracted crisis, Lasar had just published his first book, covering Pacifica's first decades. Uneasy Listening picks up the story with an insightful look at the dysfunction, devilry and devotion evident among participants in events leading up to the crisis years themselves. Insider looks at the roles played by prominent Pacifica workers (including Amy Goodman, Peter Franck and KPFA's Larry Bensky) are paired with a broadly informed narrative of how thousands of uppity listener activists successfully forced the network to walk its democratic media talk. -jl

Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde
by Lloyd Peterson [Scarecrow] buy online

Seattle-based Jazz critic Lloyd Peterson's first book is wonderfully rich collection of interviews with a range of performers on the contemporary international creative jazz scene, including William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Marilyn Crispell, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell and others. Like the very few other good English-language collections on creative and improvised music (Derek Bailey's Improvisation, John Zorn's Arcana), Music and the Creative Spirit lets musicians' own concerns and connections take center stage. Peterson's creative questions produce rich, drifting conversations on US foreign policy, race and class, and the history of jazz in the US and Europe, but always returning to thoughtful consideration of the essence and significance of creative performance. Peterson also puts some of the same questions to artist after artist – a device which makes it easy to spot commonalities and contrasts among different musicians' approaches to their craft. With artists arranged alphabetically, the book leaves it up to readers to make their own connections among artists. Highly recommended for any students of the relationship between creativity and society. -jl

Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media
by Eric Klinenberg [Henry Holt] buy online

A detailed and readable examination of how absentee ownership, centralized programming, and fake “localization” are undermining quality journalism and media diversity, and thus harming our democracy. Facing off against the industry trend toward greater consolidation, Klinenberg argues for the preservation of truly local media. In addition to providing detailed, engaging stories about how radio consolidation has harmed local communities (including the now-infamous train wreck near Minot, North Dakota), Klinenberg delivers an admirably human look at in the world of alternative weeklies. -jl

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