Dollarocracy (60 page)

23
. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Man with the Muck Rake,” speech delivered in Washington, DC, April 14, 1906,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/tr-muckrake/
.

24
. For a good look at this period and crisis, see Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks,
Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era
(Los Angeles: Litwin Books, 2011).

25
. Cited in Kaplan,
Politics and the American Press
, 166.

26
. See Daniel C. S. Stoltzfus,
Freedom from Advertising: E. W. Scripps's Chicago Experiment
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).

27
. Quoted in Kaplan,
Politics and the American Press
, 126.

28
. McCarthyism in the 1950s went a long way toward weeding out and intimidating those journalists who might take an adversarial stance toward management and were prone toward critical examinations of the existing power structure. See Edward Alwood,
Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007).

29
. Unsigned obituary, “Hazel Brannon Smith, 80, Editor Who Crusaded for Civil Rights,”
New York
Times
, May 16, 1994.

30
. D. D. Guttenplan,
American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

31
. Paul Krugman, “The Centrist Cop-Out,”
New York Times
, July 29, 2011.

32
. Ari Melber, “Why Fact-Checking Has Taken Root in This Year's Election,”
pbs.org
, September 5, 2012.

33
. W. Lance Bennett, “Press-Government Relations in a Changing Media Environment,” in Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, eds.,
The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication
(New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

34
. Michael D. Shear, “Democrats Crying Foul Over a New Romney Ad,”
New York Times
, November 23, 2011.

35
. Greg Sargent, “Romney Camp: Misrepresenting Opponent's Words Is Completely Fair Game,”
Washington Post
, November 22, 2011.

36
. Ros Krasny, “New Mitt Romney Attack Ad Called ‘Deceitful' by Obama Campaign,” Reuters, November 22, 2011.

37
. Sargent, “Romney Camp.”

38
. Adolph S. Ochs, “Business Announcement,”
New York Times
, August 19, 1896.

39
. See Eugene Secunda and Terence P. Moran,
Selling War to America: From the Spanish American War to the Global War on Terror
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007); Norman Solomon,
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005).

40
. John Nichols, ed.,
Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire
(New York: Nation Books, 2004), 93–136.

41
. Quoted in ibid., 110.

42
. Eli Pariser,
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
(New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 50. See Lippmann's two masterpieces on journalism written in 1919 and 1920 in Walter Lippmann,
Liberty and the News
(Rpt., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010). The second piece in the book, besides “Liberty and the News,” is Lippmann's piece with Charles Merz, “A Test of the News,” which appeared in the
New Republic
in August 1920. For a lengthy treatment of Lippmann's writings on journalism and democracy, see Robert W. McChesney, “That Was Now and This Is Then: Walter Lippmann and the Crisis of Journalism,” in Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard, eds.,
Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It
(New York: New Press, 2011), 151–161.

43
. Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder,
News That Matters: Television and Public Opinion
, updated ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 135–138.

44
. Greg Kaufmann, “This Week in Poverty,”
The Nation
,
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/greg-kaufmann
.

45
. Thomas E. Patterson,
The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty
(New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 89–90.

46
. W. Lance Bennett,
News: The Politics of Illusion
(New York: Longman, 1983), 92, 60.

47
. Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson,
Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Herbert Gans suggested the news media are not the independent variable in the creation of cynicism, but rather they mostly reinforce a rational response to how the political system operates. Either way, the news media are not actively battling cynicism and depoliticization. See Herbert J. Gans,
Democracy and the News
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 54.

48
. We do not wish to exaggerate this phenomenon. Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, the dissident movements of the 1960s required their own media to grow and be effective. See John McMillian,
Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Peter Richardson,
A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America
(New York: New Press, 2009).

49
. Jeff Cohen, “Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story,” CommonDreams, July 30, 2011,
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/30
.

50
. See John R. MacArthur,
The Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2000); and Howard Kurtz,
The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation
(New York: Free Press, 2000).

51
. See Jeffrey E. Cohen,
The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 14. See also the comments of
USA Today
reporter Richard Benedetto in Elizabeth A. Skewes,
Message Control: How News Is Made on the Presidential Campaign Trail
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 51.

52
. Thomas E. Patterson,
Out of Order
(New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 82.

53
. Timothy Crouse,
The Boys on the Bus
(New York: Random House, 1973), 39. For a brilliant alternative interpretation of the1972 campaign, see Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
(New York: Grand Central, 1973).

54
. Mike Gravel and David Eisenbach,
The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy
(Beverly Hills, CA: Phoenix Books, 2008), 137.

55
. Cohen has routinely used the “money primary” concept in his talks over the years, and it seems appropriate to acknowledge his coinage of the term.

56
. See, for example, Kenneth Dautrich and Thomas H. Hartley,
How the News Media Fail American Voters: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Jan Pons Vermeer, ed.,
Campaigns in the News: Mass Media and Congressional Elections
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Robert Shogan,
Bad News: Where the Press Goes Wrong in the Making of the President
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001); and S. Robert Lichter and Richard E. Noyes,
Good Intentions Make Bad News: Why Americans Hate Campaign Journalism
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). For books that go beyond campaigns to general political news but make related arguments, see Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman,
The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Jay Rosen,
What Are Journalists For?
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); and W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingstone,
When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

57
. Quoted in Patterson,
Out of Order
, 26.

58
. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella,
Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xi.

59
. For a nice discussion of this, see Matthew Robert Kerbel,
Edited for Television: CNN, ABC, and American Presidential Elections
, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 201; and Skewes,
Message Control
, 13.

60
. See Kathleen Hall Jamieson,
Everything You Think You Know about Politics . . . and Why You're Wrong
(New York: Basic Books, 2000), chap. 24.

61
. Michael Schudson,
The Power of News
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 214–215.

62
. Jeffrey Gale,
“Bullshit!”: The Media as Power Brokers in Presidential Elections
(Palm Springs, CA: Bold Hawk Press, 1988).

63
. John Nichols, “Go-Along Media Ignoring Kucinich,”
Capital Times
, December 13, 2003.

64
. Jim Naureckas, “The Dean Surge: Fear and Loathing in Campaign Punditry,”
Extra!
, October 2003; Mark Shields, “Time for Apologies,” CNNPolitics, April 12, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/12/iraq.reconsidered/index.html
.

65
. Paul Harris, “Ron Paul Exposes Media Bias,”
The Guardian
, August 16, 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/16/ron-paul-media-bias
.

66
. Clay Barbour, “Also-Rans Caught in Political Catch-22,”
Wisconsin State Journal
, August 10, 2012.

67
. See John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney,
Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
(New York: New Press, 2006), for a more detailed discussion of these issues.

68
. Lucas Shaw, “MSNBC Bids Adieu to Cenk Uygur,” Reuters, July 20, 2011; Mark Joyella, “MSNBC Calls Cenk Uygur's Version of Departure ‘Completely Baseless,'”
Mediaite
, July 21, 2011.

69
. Brian Stelter, “Sharpton Appears to Win Anchor Spot on MSNBC,”
New York Times
, July 21, 2011.

70
. Andrew Kirell, “Fox & MSNBC Became More Extreme as Election Day Neared,”
Mediaite
, November 19, 2012.

71
. Skewes,
Message Control
, 13.

72
. See Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter,
The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988–2008
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 45–52.

73
. Conor Friedersdorf, “Is Horse-Race Coverage Killing Mitt Romney,”
nationaljournal.com
, September 28, 2012.

74
. Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser,
The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril
(New York: Knopf, 2002), 231.

75
. Patterson,
Out of Order
, 82.

76
. James Fallows,
Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy
(New York: Pantheon, 1996), 170–181.

77
. Patterson,
Out of Order
, 20–23.

78
. Travis N. Ridout and Michael M. Franz,
The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 129.

79
. Joe McGinniss,
The Selling of the President 1968
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 59.

80
. Kerbel,
Edited for Television
, 203–204.

1
. Andrew Beaujon, “Las Vegas, Orlando, Pittsburgh Saw Most Political Ads Last Week,” Poynter Institute, October 17, 2012,
www.poynter.org
.

2
. Brendan Sasso, “Local Television Stations in Swing-States Cash In on Deluge of Political Ads,”
The
Hill
, October 28, 2012.

3
. Jeremy W. Peters, “73,000 Political Ads Test Even a City of Excess,”
New York Times
, October 15, 2012.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Campbell Robertson, “New Orleans Struggles with Latest Storm, Newspaper Layoffs,”
New York Times
, June 12, 2012.

6
. For a thorough update of the crisis in journalism through 2012, see Robert W. McChesney,
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
(New York: New Press, 2013), chap. 6.

7
. See James O'Shea,
The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).

8
. Steven Waldman and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communities,
The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age
(Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission, June 2011), 5.