Web Links
A nonprofit organization working to involve the public in media policymaking and to craft policies for a more democratic media system.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
FAIR advocates for greater diversity in the press and scrutinizes media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
The site monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major United States political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.
Books
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
This book analyzes the ways the media are influenced to shape major social agendas.
The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century
Robert McChesney
This book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism.
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky looks at American propaganda efforts, from the warmongering of Woodrow Wilson to the creation of popular support for the 1991 military intervention in Kuwait, and reveals how falsification of history, suppression of information and the promotion of vapid, empty concepts have become standard operating procedure.
Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
George Lakoff
George Lakoff argues that much of the success the Republican Party can be attributed to a persistent ability to control the language of key issues and thus position themselves in favorable terms to voters. Lakoff offers recommendations for ways the progressive movement can regain semantic equity by reframing their arguments.
Articles/Papers
“Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed”
Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price, Center for Media and Democracy, April 6, 2006
This multi-media report provides the most extensive account to date of how corporate-funded video news releases are routinely aired, without disclosure, as though they were independent news reports.
Periodicals/Newsletters
National Catholic Reporter breaking news and updates
Audio/Visual/Interactive Resources
Good Night and Good Luck
Warner Independent Pictures, 2005
In 1953, colleagues of CBS news personality Edward R. Murrow pressured him to submit to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s obsession with cleansing America of all potential subversives. Using the forum of Murrow’s popular program, See It Now, the broadcast journalist and his producer, Fred Friendly, investigated McCarthy’s tactics, angering their boss, sponsors and the government.
Prod. Democracy Now, 2003
Goodman uses the concrete example of the Iraq war to ask her audience to grapple with a larger question: What impact does the commercialization and consolidation of the media industry have on journalism and democracy?
The Insider
Blue Lion Entertainment, 1999
This film recounts the chain of events that pitted an ordinary man against the tobacco industry. Corporate America will use all legal means at its disposal to save a billion-dollar-a-year habit.
Fear and Favor in the Newsroom
Northwest Passage Productions, 1997
This documentary shows that ownership of the press by a small elite constricts the free flow of ideas and information upon which our democracy depends.
Wag the Dog
Baltimore Pictures, 1997
This political satire features a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer who join efforts to “fabricate” a war in order to cover-up a presidential sex scandal.
Broadcast News
20th Century Fox, 1987
The film shows remarkable insight into the people who make television. This behind-the-scenes comedy is a revealing look into the world of television. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.
All the President’s Men
Warner Bros., 1976
Reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that lead to President Nixon’s resignation.
Network
MGM, 1976
A scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television
Fahrenheit 451
Anglo Enterprises, 1966
Based on the 1951 Ray Bradbury novel. Guy Montag is a firefighter who lives in a lonely, isolated society where books have been outlawed by a government fearing an independent-thinking public. People in this society are drugged into compliance and get their information from wall-length television screens. Montag begins to question the government’s motives behind book-burning