Robert W. McChesney
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- For the scholar of Central Asian cultural studies, see Robert D. McChesney.
 Bob McChesney |
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| Born: |  Cleveland, Ohio, USA |
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| Occupation: | American Professor Author Activist Journalist |
Robert Waterman "Bob" McChesney is a professor of media studies and one of the foremost critics of American mass media. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media plays in democratic and capitalist societies. Since 2002, McChesney has been the host of Media Matters, a call-in talk radio program broadcast on WILL-AM and over the internet.
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[edit] Background and education
McChesney was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, along with fellow progressive journalist John Bellamy Foster. After college, he worked as a sports stringer for United Press International (UPI), published a weekly newspaper, and in 1979 was the founding publisher of The Rocket, a Seattle-based rock magazine which chronicled the birth of the Seattle rock scene of the late 1980s and 1990s. The creation of The Rocket is credited as the beginning of the Seattle rock scene by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[1]
[edit] Academic career
McChesney received a Ph.D. in communications at the University of Washington in 1989. From 1988 to 1998 he was on the Journalism and Mass Communications faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
McChesney is an editor for several scholarly communication journals and co-edits the University of Illinois' History of communication book series.[2] He has served on the editorial board of The Progressive and the board of directors for In These Times[3]
[edit] Media Matters radio program
Since 2002, Bob McChesney has hosted Media Matters, a call-in radio show broadcast weekly on WILL-AM. Guests such as Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Danny Schechter, Amy Goodman, and Howard Zinn discuss the relationship between media and American politics and answer questions from callers.[4]
The liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, formed in 2004, changed their name to Media Matters for America to avoid confusion between the two entities.
[edit] Media reform and social activism
One of McChesney's primary interests is media reform. He is the founder and president of Free Press, a national, non-partisan organization dedicated to media reform and democratization. He is a former editor of the socialist Monthly Review, and now a director of the foundation that operates the magazine. McChesney sits on the board of directors of the Institute for Public Accuracy.[5]
[edit] Views
[edit] American media
One of the main themes of McChesney's work is that "deregulated media" is a complete misnomer. The media is, instead, a governmentally sanctioned oligopoly, owned by a few highly profitable corporate entities. These concerns jealously guard their privilege through legislative influence and through use of their control of news coverage, by which means they distort public understanding of media issues. McChesney pinpoints the beginning of governmental oversight with the regulatory role imposed on the U.S. government at the advent of broadcast, where government was required to enforce the broadcasting rights of a limited number of participants. McChesney sees the Communications Act of 1934 as essentially allowing monopolistic rights to broadcasters who had shown the greatest propensity for profit. Subsequent to this act were the provisions of the Fairness Doctrine, which had provisions for public interest broadcasting due to the scarcity of the broadcasting resource. These restrictions were later overturned in the 1980's under the banner of "deregulation."
Policy debates focus on marginal and tangential issues because core structures and policies are off-limits to criticism. In this environment, policy debates tend to gravitate to the elite level and public participation virtually disappears. After all, for most people, minor media policy issues are far down the list of important topics. Sweeping media reform is unthinkable - and politically impossible. The public's elimination from the process is encouraged by the corruption of the U.S. political system, in which politicians tend to be comfortable with the status quo and not inclined to upset powerful commercial media owners and potential campaign contributors. The dominant media firms enjoy the power to control news coverage of debates over media policies; this is a power they have used shamelessly to trivialize, marginalize, and distort opposition to the status quo.[6]
McChesney described American media coverage of 9/11 as "blatant propaganda."[7]
[edit] Other views
McChesney is critical of many aspects of America's current foreign policy. In a 2001 interview with LiP magazine, McChesney called Palestine "a wonderful nation that has been deprived of its independence, and now is trying to survive against an extraordinarily aggressive and powerful country that gets exceptional aid from the US." In the same interview, he said "[t]he United States is, I think, by any honest account, the leading terrorist institution in the world today."[8]
[edit] Personal life
McChesney lives in Champaign-Urbana. He is married and has two children.
[edit] Awards
- Goldsmith Book Prize, 1999.
- Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, 1999. Both for Rich Media, Poor Democracy.[9]
[edit] Books
- 1993, 2004: Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935
- 1997: Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
- 1997: The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (with Edward Herman)
- 1999, 2000: Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
- 2000: It's the Media, Stupid! (with John Nichols)
- forewords by: Paul Wellstone, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Ralph Nader
- 2002: Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (with John Nichols)
- introductions by Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and Barbara Ehrenreich
- 2003: The Big Picture: Understanding Media Through Political Economy (with John Bellamy Foster)
- 2004: The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the 21st Century
- 2004: Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism (edited with Ben Scott)
- 2005: Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sells War, Spins Elections, and Destroys Democracy (with John Nichols)
[edit] Articles
- 1998: Making Media Democratic, Boston Review. This article was one inspiration for the Indymedia movement.
[edit] Other media appearances
- Orwell Rolls in His Grave, 2004 documentary film.
- In 2003, Bill Moyers interviewed McChesney and co-author John Nichols on the television program NOW.[10]
[edit] References
- ^ Biography from Seven Stories Press website. Reproduces material on defunct www.bobmcchesney.com site. [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ fair.org profile. [3]
- ^ "Bob McChesney, host of Media Matters, challenges listeners to be critical media consumers." WILL AM 580 website. Accessed March 14, 2007. [4]
- ^ fair.org profile. [5]
- ^ McChesney, Robert. 2004. Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ^ "Nattering networks: How mass media fail democracy. An interviw with Bob McChesney." by Jessica Clark. LiP Magazine, Sept 24, 2001. [6]
- ^ "Nattering networks: How mass media fail democracy. An interviw with Bob McChesney." by Jessica Clark. LiP Magazine, Sept 24, 2001. [7]
- ^ "Robert W. McChesney Authors Award-Winning Book." December 1, 2000. University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Sciences Archives. [8]
- ^ Transcript: Bill Moyers Talks with John Nichols & Robert McChesney. NOW with Bill Moyers website. [9] Accessed March 14, 2007.
