Product Description

WHO PUT THE MEDIA IN CHARGE?
Why does the media always blow the big stories? From 9/11 to Iraq's WMDs, from Iran's nuclear program to the inevitable Hillary Clinton the divide between reality and the so-called news has never been more dramatic or dangerous.
In The Kingmakers Senator Mike Gravel and Dr. David Eisenbach argue that the media's failure to present the public with an accurate view of the world poses a greater threat to American lives than terrorism. They also show how the greatest threat to our democracy is not money. It's the media. Long before the majority of voters pay attention to presidential elections, the media Kingmakers filter the presidential field and anoint the leading candidates.

Gravel and Eisenbach propose a powerful antidote to the Kingmakers' poisonous influence on American politics participatory journalism. Blogs, chat rooms, virtual worlds and Internet contributions have empowered ordinary citizens to change the course of American history and inaugurate a new wave of democratization that America hasn't seen since the Jacksonian era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #732735 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-17
• Released on: 2008-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 204 pages

Review
"Review"

Former Senator Gravel and Eisenbach collaborate in this searing denunciation of the American media, which they posit is the biggest threat to our democracy. According to the authors, the media marginalize dissenting voices and fail to provide the public with accurate news coverage, being content with regurgitating unconfirmed and often blatantly untrue reports from establishment figures. The authors dissect the media echo chamber and contagion of lazy journalism, debunking the lies and half-truths that they argue the media have accepted without scrutiny and irresponsibly repeated to the public. In frightening detail, this book illustrates how political elites manipulated the media to deceive the world about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and attempt to pursue war with Iran, using staged photo ops (George W. Bush posing under the Mission Accomplished banner) and fabricating events as in the case of the eventually disproved account of Pvt. Jessica Lynch's heroics. The authors call for participatory journalism, which will empower Americans to engage in online political debate. This important book is a valuable contribution to that debate and ought to be essential reading for all Americans. --Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Senator Mike Gravel represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969-81. In 1971, he waged a one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to end the Vietnam draft. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations during the Vietnam Era. Gravel is author of Citizen Power, reissued in 2008, and is currently running for the Presidency of the United States.

David Eisenbach, PhD teaches media and politics at Columbia University. His first book, Gay Power: An American Revolution (2006), explains how the gay rights movement used the media to transform the nation's political and social landscape. Dr. Eisenbach is the communications director for Senator Mike Gravel's 2008 presidential campaign.

Customer Reviews

worthy of being read but needs a larger historical context
For those who are interested in familiarizing themselves with how the media treats events and, especially, campaign issues, this book is useful. It balances out popular myths created by the media, in particular, by major news commentators ranging from Russert to Blitzer, et al. Through substantial exemplification, it exposes, quite correctly, bias, favoritism, neglect and the absence of objective and realistic analysis. As a major explanation for this, Gravel identifies, partially correctly, the concept of news commentators "following the story line" that habitually and temporarily excites the masses and is used for marketing and selling techniques.

To be sure, this is a major weakness in America's media, and Gravel and Eisenbach expose it with rigor and convincability. And it does pose a threat to security and democracy.

Unfortunately, this book has a narrow and limited focus. Its purpose is not to place the function and performance of the media into a larger comparative historical context. Had it done so, it could have offered the reader a profound and highly important insight into how overemphasizing and adulating democracy actually contributes in a major way to the very problem this book exposes. Overpoliticizing the masses and overadulating democracy erodes ethics and engenders what should be called "demofascism," i.e. people oppressing people.

Edward Bernays, the founding father of the modern public relations industry who wrote his famous book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" in the early '20s, though Jewish, had his book elevated to be the pride of Goebbels' library of propaganda books. Bernays was obviously shocked when he became of aware of this in the early '30s. His actions span more than 60 years, and he had presidents and major corporations as his customers. Advocating that all corps. need their pr depts., his advice contributed to the current nasty habit of having nearly all major bureaucracies devote a shocking percentage of their resources for selling themselves, for sugarcoating and whitewashing their actions and, generally, fooling the public. A fascist element is part of the media, of marketing, public relations and selling something. This has to be pointed out and would support the book's message.

Beyond this, Ernst Hanfstaengl, a well-connected Harvard political science graduate, who seems to have observed closely U.S. political party conventions, became Hitler's campaign advisor and introduced the Nazis to U.S. election techniques and pep rally hoopla as well as U.S. cheer leading and associated musical support to whip up the masses into hysterical frenzy which surfaces in both Nazi and U.S. political rallies par excellence. Hanfstaengl, in his autobiography, admits having introduced Hitler to America's electioneering method and associated media techniques and the custom of cheerleading the masses. He composed at least 12 storm trooper songs based upon the hyped up beat of American music, according to his own testimony. If Gravel and Eisenbach desire to point out how the media threatens security and democracy, including this could have cemented their case.

All of this and more is missing in Gravel's book and needs to be understood. Nevertheless, Gravel's book is very important insofar as it does raise the issue of America's neglect of a realistic domestic analysis of its socio-economic conditions, but it is only a necessary start.