Abstract
The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once wrote that “Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well informed people in the Western world.”2 That was 25 years ago, and after two-plus decades of more deregulation and the growth of conglomerates in the media that trend has continued. From Tyra Banks’s shifting figure and the Balloon Boy hoax, to the celebrity death of Michael Jackson and the Obama Beer Summit, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of tabloidized, trivialized, and outright useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip.
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
— Charles Dickens1
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Notes
Richard Alan Krieger, Civilizations Quotations: Life’s Ideal (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002), 80.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 106.
For reports about skewed corporate media coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death, see “Anna Nicole Smith And Our National Media Embarassment,” Think Progress, February 9, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/09/anna-nicole-media-embarassment. Ryers Online Editorial, “Anna Nicole Smith Coverage Becoming Too Much?” February 15, 2007, RyersOnline, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.ryersonline.ca/blogs/83/Anna-Nicole-Smith-coverage-becoming-too-much.html.
For more on “junk food news,” see Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, and Frances A. Capell, “Infotainment Society: Junk Food News for 2008/2009,” Daily Censored, June 8, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://dailycensored.com/2009/06/08/infotainment-society-junk-food-news-for-20082009.
For more on undercovered stories at the time, see Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2008 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), chap. 1
Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008); or see Censored 2008 and Censored 2009 stories online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2008 and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009.
Georgina Dickenson, “14-times Olympic Gold Medal Winner Michael Phelps Caught with Cannabis Pipe,” News of the World, February 1, 2009, http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/150832/14-times-Olympic-gold-medal-winner-Michael-Phelps-caught-with-bong-cannabis-pipe.html; “Phelps Acknowledges Photo of Him Smoking a Bong,” FOXSports.com, February 2, 2009, http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/9160136/Report:-Picture-shows-Phelps-using-bong; and “Michael Phelps escapes pot charges,” Vancouver Sun, February 16, 2009, http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Michael+Phelps+escapes+charges/1295645/story.html. For marijuana arrests, see Paul Armentano, “Marijuana Arrests Set New Record,” Project Censored, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-marijuana-arrests-set-new-record.
“Please Stop Calling Jessica Simpson Fat,” NBC Bay Area, February 6, 2009, http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around_town/the_scene/Stop-Calling-Jessica-Simpson-Fat.html; “Jessica Simpson Shocks Fans with Noticeably Fuller Figure,” FOXNews.com, January 27, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483204,00.html; Marcus Baram, “Obama Talks Football, Troop Withdrawal, Malia and Sasha’s School, and Jessica Simpson,” Huffington Post, February 1, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/01/obama-talks-football-troo_n_162971.html.
For further reading on some of the themes here, see Rick Shenkman, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 13–14; and “Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985–2009,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, September 13, 2009, http://people-press.org/report/543. For more on the “truth emergency” concept and movement, see http://truthemergency.us, the website for the conference co-organized by the chapter authors in January 2008.
Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Sisir Kumar Das and Nityapriçya Ghosha (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994), 169.
Cited in Adam W Parsons, “World Bank Poverty Figures: What Do They Mean?” Share the World’s Resources, September 15, 2008, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html.
Mark R. Elsis, “The Three Top Sins of the Universe,” Starvation.net, February 9, 2002, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.starvation.net.
David Cecere, “New Study Finds 45,000 Deaths Annually Linked to Lack of Health Coverage,” HarvardScience, September 17, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-lack-health-coverage.
Gary Orfield, Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge (Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project at UCLA, 2009).
Cornel West, quoted in Juontel White, “Political Leadership in the Black Community: Cornel West and Tavis Smiley Give Lecture at USC,” Black Voices, November 16, 2006, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.blackvoicesonline.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=c6224b88-e419-47f9-bb1b-dc76dadb60e5.
A. J. Liebling, “Do You Belong in Journalism?” The New Yorker, May 4, 1960, 109.
Gilbert Burnham et al., “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Crosssectional Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet 368, no. 9545 (2006): 1421–28.
John Tirman, “Bush’s War Totals,” The Nation, January 28, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/tirman. See also Phillips and Roth, Censored 2009, 19–25.
For President Obama’s continuation of this policy at Guantanamo Bay, see “Obama Won’t Change Terror Detention System: Report,” Reuters, September 23, 2009, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2342276720090924?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews.
See Phillips and Roth, Censored 2008, chap. 1; and David Hoch and Odette Wilkens, “The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is Invidiously Detrimental to the Animal Rights Movement (and Unconstitutional as Well),” Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, March 9, 2007, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-%28aeta%29.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, introduction to The Womans Bible (New York: European Publishing Co., 1895).
Sanjay Gupta, “It Can Happen to You,” CNN.com, January 30, 2008, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/blogs/paging.dr.gupta/2008/01/it-can-happen-to-you.html.
Andrew P. Wilper et al., “Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults,” American Journal of Public Health 99, no. 12 (2009): 2289–95.
See Phillips, Censored 2006 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 48–52.
For more on the themes developed in this article, see Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, Censored 2010 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009).
David J. Palmisano, On Leadership: Essential Principles for Success (New York: Sky Horse Publishing, 2008), 129.
See Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1801, accessed March 1–9, 2010, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch4s33.html.
For more on the concept of hyperreality, see Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 166–84.
John Tiffin and Nobuyoshi Terashima, eds., Hyperreality: Paradigm for the Third Millennium (New York: Routledge, 2001).
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© 2011 Sue Curry Jansen, Jefferson Pooley, and Lora Taub-Pervizpour
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Huff, M., Phillips, P. (2011). Media Democracy in Action. In: Jansen, S.C., Pooley, J., Taub-Pervizpour, L. (eds) Media and Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119796_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119796_16
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