Book Review: News For All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media by Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres
The foundational question all journalists -- all Americans, for that matter -- should be asking is: How should news and information flow through American democracy, and who can access that media? Believe it or not, the founders of the United States, through huge fits, spasms and debates created the U.S. Postal Office in 1774 to move newspapers throughout the land, for hardly anything or nothing at all.
How times have changed, with media monopolies lobotomizing the news, the centralizing of newspaper and broadcast reporting, the looming death of independent publishers and booksellers and the evisceration of U.S. mail service. In fact, much of the ugliness in the media associated with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch and other mainstream corporate press shills is a rerun of this country's media history.
The groundbreaking book, "News for All the People," takes the reader on a 400-year journey from the past transgressions to today's democratic crisis, one largely created by the deeds of those controlling the media and the narratives our citizens are actually "consuming." It delves deeply into why those narratives are slanted, misrepresented or scrubbed altogether by the so-called liberal media. "It is our contention that newspapers, radio, and television played a pivotal role in perpetuating racist views among the general population," write Juan Gonzalez