Media And Society Books - Page 2

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

Edward W. Said

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Contrarian worth reading . . . 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

First published in 1981 and updated in 1997, Said's critique of the media's coverage of Islam, particularly in the Middle East, is a thought-provoking challenge to any reader's perceptions of what is reported as news from that war-torn part of the world. Written before 9/11, subsequent military intervention in Afghanistan, and the current conflict in Iraq, the book's interpretation of events unfolding there (the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran) are often prophetic. An understanding of Islam based solely on Western "interest," he argues, will lead to further and protracted conflict rather than resolution of differences.

Despite a carping tone that becomes irritating and a tendency to make its points with a thoroughness that seems like overkill, the book throws a searching light on how Islam is represented by news gatherers, experts, and policy makers. Emphasis on violence, anti-American rhetoric, and resistance to "modernization," for example, belie the fact that there is not a single monolithic Islam but many Islams and that what news organizations perpetuate is an undifferentiated form of cultural stereotyping - as if it were sufficient to say about the Dutch that they all wear wooden shoes.

Said's arguments are dismissed (see other reviews here) for reasons that may have some validity (as a Palestinian-American, his sympathies are clearly not pro-Israeli), but readers can benefit nonetheless from his contrarian views, especially since they throw into question assumptions about the Middle East, which so far show a tendency (as in the case of Iran and Iraq) to seriously misjudge political and cultural realities.

Editorial Review:

While the 16 years that have passed since the first edition of this book hit the stands have been marked by an increase in sensitivity toward many ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, the easy acceptance of stereotypes and prejudices in the portrayal, depiction of, and reporting about Islamic peoples has remained largely constant. In this updated version of this rigorous but engaging volume Edward Said looks at how American popular media has used and perpetuated a narrow and unfavorable image of Islamic peoples, and how this has prevented understanding while providing a fictitious common enemy for the diverse American populace.

How to Watch TV News: Revised Edition

Neil Postman, Steve Powers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Terrific read! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who tunes into TV news to stay "in the know." This book truly enlightened me! Written by two award winning veterans in the field of journalism, I was pleased with the vast wealth of information and insight provided in this book. Packed with industry facts and shrewd perceptions, the book made me seriously ponder "what exactly is TV news and just what have I been watching all these years?" This book is also very timely, as it delves into how the Internet has further altered the reality and integrity of the news. It's a must read for anyone who wants to fully understand TV news and how it can manipulate our world view.

Editorial Review:

A scathing and prescient look at television news—now updated for the new tech-savvy generation

Television news : genuine information or entertainment fodder? Fifteen years ago, Neil Postman, a pioneer in media education and author of the bestselling Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Steve Powers, an award-winning broadcast journalist, concluded that anyone who relies exclusively on their television for accurate world news is making a big mistake. A cash cow laden with money from advertisers, so-called news shows glut viewers with celebrity coverage at the cost of things they really should know. Today, this message is still appallingly true but the problems have multiplied— along with the power of the Internet and the abundance of cable channels. A must-read for anyone concerned with the way media is manipulating our worldview, this newly revised edition addresses the evolving technology and devolving quality of America’s television news programming.

The New Media Monopoly

Ben H. Bagdikian

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Ben Bagdikian has written the first great media book of the twenty-first century. The New Media Monopoly will provide a roadmap to understanding how we got here and where we need to go to make matters better." —Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy

"No book on the media has proved as influential to our understanding of the dangers of corporate consolidation to democracy and the marketplace of ideas; this new edition builds on those works and surpasses them." —Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?

Praise for the First Edition of The Media Monopoly:

"A groundbreaking work that charts a historical shift in the orientation of the majority of America's communications media—further away from the needs of the individual and closer to those of big business." —Bruce Manuel, Christian Science Monitor

When the first edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1983, critics called Ben Bagdikian's warnings about the chilling effects of corporate ownership and mass advertising on the nation's news "alarmist." Since then, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, book publishers, and movie companies has dwindled from fifty to ten to five.

The most respected critique of modern mass media ever issued is now published in a completely updated and revised twentieth anniversary edition.

Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)

Carol Platt Liebau

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Sex -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Sex -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Disappointed and left wanting... 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

For purposes of clarity, and in order to dispel the assertions of comments directed at several other consumers posted here, I have indeed read this book, cover to cover. And no, I am not an idiot. In fact, I suspect that anyone who uses such unattractive epithets toward a person speaking her or his mind has no real evidence or background to rebut in an intelligent and appropriate manner. If anyone reading this review is thusly inclined, you may want to save time and stop reading now, as your words will not deter me from my opinion, nor will they cause me to question my intelligence.

I consider most of my political and moral views to be on the liberal side, but I agree that our culture is sex-obsessed and that our future generations are suffering as a result. Therefore, I picked up Ms. Liebau's book in the hopes of finding deep analysis and optimistic resolutions. Upon completion of the book, I was very disheartened. I did not expect exaggerated nostalgia for a time when women were just as much sex objects as they are now, only for different reasons.

During the "Golden Age" that the author refers to, women were wives, mistresses, or spinsters, and much of the time none of those were desirable roles. Media creations were also just as obscene, in a different way. Magazine articles listed ways in which to be a good wife, which included not asking questions when your husband comes home late, or not at all. Television shows rarely depicted women as anything other than doting housewife and mother who had minimal input to the important matters of the household.

In the real world, working women were limited to mainly secretarial, housekeeping, or childcare positions, where sexual harassment by their male superiors was rampant, assumed, and ignored by higher authorities. Women were often expected to perform sexual favors for promotions or raises, or merely to keep the boss happy. In the home, sex was considered the wifely duty, as marital rape was not illegal, and birth control was nearly impossible to receive, especially without her husband's permission. Women who were bred to be wives were often not taught the intricacies of sex and intimacy, thus rendering a wife dependent on her husband's tutelage. Many men sought relationships outside of the marriage in order to have their more obscure desires fulfilled by more "knowledgeable" women.

A woman had no opportunity to decide that marriage and children were actual ambitions; conventional family life was already on the map the day she was born a girl. And to have a career and a family was simply out of the question. Any attempts to remedy an unhappy marriage or to avoid a fate they did not want was met with disdain by men and women alike. Divorcees were pariahs, and single women of a certain age were either ignored or looked upon as sad and unfortunate. The shame and taboo surrounding sex and talk about sex kept many victims of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse quiet. Thus, an untold number of predators went unseen and unpunished.

I agree that changes need to be made, in the direction of both women and men recognizing the value of committed relationships that entail both enjoyable and healthy sex as well as honesty, communication, and equality. In truth, and what Ms. Liebau fails to mention, is that good relationships are the responsibility of both partners. Any liability placed with men, according to her, is negated by women who don't value themselves and thereby "[breed] in men a lack of respect for women in general." There can't be much respect present to begin with, if sex is the primary focus of men, as the author claims, and as indicated by her research detailing the enormous number of times men claim to be thinking about sex daily.

Men are cited as being biologically different from women in ways that cause their uncontrollable sexual urges, just waiting to be satisfied by any willing (i.e., "easy") woman, and that such women are predators bred by the evils of contemporary feminism. The author takes for granted that women are intrinsically more emotional and more likely to seek love and affection, than men, who are inherently sexual in nature. The only scientific evidence I could find in the book for this assertion was that men have "ten to one hundred times more testosterone" than women. That's it? No brain scans, no longitudinal or cross-cultural studies? No accounting for the difference in socialization between girls and boys? Men may be just as emotional and attached as women, and just as intent on finding commitment and happiness- they may just be more apt to follow in the stream of machismo they have witnessed as boys and have grown to believe is expected and desirable. I would have liked to read a chapter or two on how the sexualized culture damages our boys as well, and not because girls have "forced" them to accept easy sex in lieu of committed relationships.

Women and girls objectify themselves today, as they have been (and still are) objectified by men, and it's still all our fault? Okay, so some feminists got it wrong when they insisted that we could liberate ourselves with free love and the result was free sex. But they meant well. They were angry and frustrated, as I have been, at the way women have been treated, and how many still prefer to be treated because of the false security it offers. Free love was meant to be a way to wake women from the slumber of unhappy relationships, personal and professional, and shake up society in a way to grab attention for the cause of equality. Some women may still insist that they are perfectly happy being single, or unmarried and involved, or any other number of situations that don't include marriage. I take their words for it. After all, who am I, or anyone else, to assume that I know better?

That said, I do agree that many women are mainly looking for happiness, love, affection, stability, romance, and commitment, or any one or a combination of these or others. I think that over time we have tried many methods of figuring out how to get those things, and many of us have failed. We're not sure what is expected of us, and socialization, instinct, and experience are all pulling us in different directions sometimes. What we're seeing in history and at present is women trying to find how we may fit in equally, with the only expectations set in place are the ones we also find acceptable.

Feminists have tried to use sex as a manipulator, much as the author suggests we all use virginity, in order to receive the genuine affection we crave. They're both mistaken. The focus of remedy for our oversexed culture cannot be focused simply on girls and women, and their sexual power (or lack thereof). It must also come down on the shoulders of our boys and men, and how we teach them to treat the opposite sex- neither as delicate flowers needing protection, nor as objects waiting to satisfy any sexual (or other) whim they may have, but as equals who deserve respect and consideration, incidentally the same things that they should also expect in return.

As part of a team effort, we need to place value on education and respecting others' intelligence and opinions. We need to find interest in things that will increase our inherent value, such as world events, humanitarianism, art, and spirituality, to name a few. We need to find within ourselves the love and affection that we seek from others, and the confidence to accept who we are, as we are. Only then may we find true attraction and the appeal of those who have similar values, rather than thinking we can experience the gift of love from merely physical expression. And only when we can display these healthfully as examples for our children will they follow suit.

Editorial Review:

Political analyst and commentator Carol Platt Liebau takes a hard look at the pervasiveness of sex in today's culture and the havoc it wreaks on young people.

So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq

Greg Mitchell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In early 2003, Greg Mitchell was one of the few mainstream journalists to seriously question the stated reasons for invading Iraq. In the years since, he has repeatedly challenged the media to probe the conduct of the war and its toll on our troops.

Now, after five years of war, he traces the conflict -- from the "runup" to the "surge" -- and the media's coverage of it, in this important collection of commentaries with significant new additions: an original introduction and dozens of pages of fresh material that unify the essays.

If a free press is the watchdog of democracy, then Greg Mitchell must be the watchdog of the watchdogs, tracking the performance of the media at Editor & Publisher, the influential magazine of the newspaper industry. Over the past five years, in his widely read column, "Pressing Issues," he has repeatedly been ahead of the curve in intensely scrutinizing both the president and the press--and the controversies swirling around Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Tillman, "Scooter" Libby, Ann Coulter and numerous other figures.

His book is a unique history of the entire war--and as topical as today's headlines. Whether writing early warnings that anticipated a long and bloody war, analyzing Stephen Colbert's in-his-face mockery of George W. Bush, or imagining the president confessing his sins to Oprah Winfrey, Greg Mitchell explores how we got into the war in Iraq--and why we just can't seem to get out. With tens of thousands of American troops still in Iraq, debate over the war continues to rage on TV news and across editorial pages. Against this backdrop of controversy, Greg Mitchell is the rare journalist who has seen it all with clear eyes. In So Wrong for So Long, he can finally tell the whole story.

Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility (Wadsworth Series in Communication Studies)

Charles U. Larson

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Editorial Review:

PERSUASION: RECEPTION AND RESPONSIBILITY presents persuasion through the examination of various aspects of popular culture -- politics, mass media, advertising, and the Internet -- as they exemplify and teach critical theories of persuasion. The text's multi-chapter focus on language and critical thinking is combined with readability, a conversational engagement with the reader, and current verbal and real-life visual examples of persuasion in action. Persuasion theory, research, and ethics are all woven throughout the text to consistently underscore the book's central purpose -- the development of critical consumers of all forms of persuasion.

It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News

Drew Curtis

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Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the creator of Fark.com, an exposé on the media gone awry, revealing the hysterical, often outrageous non-news that passes for newsworthy today

Have you ever found yourself noticing certain patterns in the news you see and read each day? Perhaps it’s the blatant fear-mongering in the absence of facts on your local 6 o’clock news (“Tsunami could hit the Atlantic any day!” EVERYBODY PANIC), or the seasonal articles that appear year after year like clockwork (“Roads will be crowded this holiday season.” Thanks AAA.). IT’S NOT NEWS, IT’S FARK is Drew Curtis’ clever examination of the state of the media today and a hilarious look at the go-to stories mass media uses when there's just not enough hard news to fill a newspaper or a news broadcast. Who is to blame for non-news in the media? Is it the media, or the media consumer and their website-clicking habits? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between? IT'S NOT NEWS, IT'S FARK takes a crack at why

Drew exposes eight stranger-than-fiction media patterns that prove just how little reporting is going on in the world of reporters today. Regardless of whether it’s a slow news day, mainstream media still has to deliver. IT’S NOT NEWS, IT’S FARK examines all the “news” that was never fit for print in the first place, and promises to have you laughing (with the media, mind you, not at them...) along the way. Let the hilarity ensue.

Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio

Alec Foege

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Right of the Dial, Alec Foege explores how the mammoth media conglomerate evolved from a local radio broadcasting operation, founded in 1972, into one of the biggest, most profitable, and most polarizing corporations in the country. During its heyday, critics accused Clear Channel, the fourth-largest media company in the United States and the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, of ruining American pop culture and cited it as a symbol of the evils of media monopolization, while fans hailed it as a business dynamo, a beacon of unfettered capitalism. What’s undeniable is that as the owner at one point of more than 1,200 radio stations, 130 major concert venues and promoters, 770,000 billboards, 41 television stations, and the largest sports management business in the country, Clear Channel dominated the entertainment world in ways that MTV and Disney could only dream of. But in the fall of 2006, after years of public criticism and flattening stock prices, Goliath finally tumbled—Clear Channel Inc. sold off one-third of its radio holdings and all of its television concerns while transferring ownership to a consortium of private equity firms. The move signaled the end of an era in media consolidation, and in Right of the Dial, Foege takes an insightful look at the company’s successes and abuses, showing the ways in which Clear Channel reshaped America’s cultural and corporate landscapes along the way.

When Words Collide: A Media Writer's Guide to Grammar and Style (with InfoTrac®) (Wadsworth Series in Mass Communication and Journalism)

Lauren Kessler, Duncan McDonald

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A great, clear, easy guide to grammar rules,tricks and info. 5 out of 5 stars.
33 of 36 people found this review helpful.

This book changed my life! I took a class in college from tbe author and this was the textbook. I have been in advertising and marketing for the past 12 years and I use this book all the time. It's so easy to use and the info is really clear.

The best part is a guide at tbe back that explains the distinctions between commonly misused words. For Example: farther/further (farther--physical distance-throw the ball farther and further --degree,time or quanity - discuss the issue further); since/because (since -- denotes a period of time -it's been many years since we've been together and because gives a reason or cause); irregardless(isn't a word) etc. I recommend this book to everyone--it's great.

Editorial Review:

WHEN WORDS COLLIDE is the most versatile grammar and usage handbook for beginning and continuing media writers. The book is praised by readers for its straightforward, clear treatment of grammar, offered in a lighthearted, almost conversational tone. As a handbook, it serves as a reference tool for writers throughout their writing careers. It provides concise and clear explanations and examples, or a quick and accurate answer to a grammar or usage question. The unique 'from writer to writer' perspective engages writers and guides them firsthand through the writing process.

The Great Brain Suck: And Other American Epiphanies

Eugene Halton

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Editorial Review:

More and more information is pumped into our media-saturated world every day, yet Americans seem to know less and less. In a society where who you are is defined by what you buy, and where we prefer to experience reality by watching it on TV, Eugene Halton argues something has clearly gone wrong.
Luckily Halton, with scalpel-sharp wit in one hand and the balm of wisdom in the other, is here to operate on the declining body politic. His initial diagnosis is bleak: fast food and too much time spent sitting, whether in our cars or on our couches, are ruining our bodies, while our minds are weakened by the proliferation of electronic devices—TVs, computers, cell phones, iPods, video games—and their alienating effects. If we are losing the battle between autonomy and automation, he asks, how can our culture regain self-sufficiency? Halton finds the answer in the inspiring visions—deeply rooted in American culture—of an organic and more spontaneous life at the heart of the work of master craftsman Wharton Esherick, legendary blues singer Muddy Waters, urban critic Lewis Mumford, and artist Maya Lin, among others.
A scathing and original jeremiad against modern materialism, The Great Brain Suck is also a series of epiphanies of a simpler but more profound life.