.jpg)
News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media
News for All the People is a sweeping account of the class and racial conflicts in American news media, from the first colonial newspaper to the internet age. It chronicles key government decisions that created our nation’s system of news, major political battles over the role of the press, and the rise of media conglomerates and epoch-defining technologies. The book reveals how racial segregation in the media distorted the news and unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence through their coverage. And it illuminates how Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative and democratic press and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies.
The writing is fast-paced, story-driven and replete with portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, the heroes and the villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate battles and government policies that built our segregated media system— as when Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover gave a radio license to a notorious KKK organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system, such as Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos ’n’ Andy off the air.
News for All the People will become the new standard history of American media.
Hardback, 456 pages
ISBN: 9781844676873
October 2011
$29.95 / £25.00 / $37.50CAN
Reviews
-
Juan González and Joseph Torres have rendered a splendid public service with this highly readable and engrossing story of how the press sees—and doesn’t see—who we are as a people. Race and ethnicity, power and privilege, the visible and the invisible are at the core of our democratic crisis today, and it’s hard to imagine a better way to face the challenge than to be armed with the story this book tells so well.
-
News for All the People is truly a masterpiece; I could not put it down. After years of research, Juan González and Joseph Torres have produced a book that will be nothing short of mandatory reading for all who care about the media or democracy. It will change how you think about media and American history.
-
A ‘first-of-its-kind’ rendering of the causes, contexts, and consequences of the American media system across the fault line of race. Haunting and prophetic, this is a must-read for all the people.
-
With clarity, exquisite detail and strong scholarship, the authors show us how the neglect of the mainstream press over the years still haunts the nation’s identity about who is an American.
-
The historic inability of marginalized communities to control their own images has been devastating. News for All the People illustrates that this lack of control hasn’t been by accident. It’s a part of a greater story of media control and ownership that traces back to the creation of the United States. An essential read.
-
This is journalism history from an entirely fresh perspective, one that challenges the old heroes and shines a sharp light on the role of the media in revealing social inequities in a democratic society.
-
Meticulously researched, adeptly written, and most important, historically significant…an important work.
-
With vivid detail, González and Torres trace the history of minority journalism in the United States from Colonial newspapers to today’s blogs. This important text should be required reading in journalism schools.
-
[E]xamines some of the news media’s dirtiest laundry — the media’s active roles in lynching Blacks, exterminating Native Americans and brutally harassing Hispanics and Asian-Americans...insightful [and] awareness-expanding.
-
When journalists write history, there is always the danger of that history being shallow, surface-level. This remarkable book is one of the rare instances of such a problem being a positive, due to its great, realized ambition. For this narrative successfully weaves the history of Black media, Native American media, Hispanic media and Asian media within the context of the history of America’s capitalistic media development. As 2011 ends, Gonzalez and Torres provide not just a clear understanding of how the enemy built the empire, but merge historical ideas on how to use the new/old tools at our disposal to resist it.
-
[This] groundbreaking book takes the reader on a 400-year journey from the past transgressions to today’s democratic crisis, one largely created by the deeds of those controlling the media and the narratives our citizens are actually 'consuming.' It delves deeply into why those narratives are slanted, misrepresented or scrubbed altogether by the so-called liberal media.
-
[O]ffers constant reminders that this conflict has been a true civil war with serious casualties, lasting through many decades and perhaps yet ended. The journalists portrayed here recognized that journalism was a weapon of resistance. If there have been advances, it is in good part because such journalism, bravely wielded, can fight the good fight.
-
[T]he discussion of Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson and the press storm that surrounded them will give readers new insights into the world those African American athletes faced. Particularly useful as an introductory resource for those interested in the role the news media played in racial integration. Highly recommended.
Blog
Interview with Juan González
An interview by Elizabeth Floyd Mair with Juan González ran in the Times Union in Albany, NY on April 19th to coincide with González's appearance at Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY, where he spoke about the history of media and oppresion.
Q: What do you think of the term "the liberal media"?
A: The "liberal media" myth, like most stereotypes, contains a kernel of truth, but ends up being a huge distortion of a complex reality. The class divide in our media system is far more defining than the left-right political divide. Most journalists in the commercial media have become somewhat divorced from the daily problems of ordinary Americans. They therefore give far less attention and coverage to the "other" America, those less privileged and less powerful. And they give disproportionate attention and coverage to the 1 percent celebrities, successful businessmen, powerful government figures, and so forth.
Read the full interview here.
Spring event dates for Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres
Keep a close eye on Verso's events page in the coming weeks: during March, April and May, Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, co-authors of News For All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the Media, will be going across the country for a series of lectures and discussions about the history of race and media in the United States.
Please click below to see a list of their respective speaking dates and stay posted for more information and details to come:
The Progressive magazine's best of 2011 list features two Verso titles
The Progressive's editor Matthew Rothschild included The S Word on his list of best books of 2011.
John Nichols chose News for All the People for his list of best books of 2011.
Discussions
Begin a discussion about this book-
Kindle Version
Is there a Kindle version for "News For All the People" planned?
Thanks. God Bless.
Aaron.