--------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <[email protected]> Date: 2009/3/23 Subject: Barker Article: Blame the Media
Hi here is my latest article which is a critique of Professor William Domhoff's work on the media. Michael Barker, Blame the Media, Swans Commentary, March 23, 2009. (Swans - March 23, 2009) For many on the Left, it is readily apparent that the American mass media manufactures public consent for elite interests. At a push, many of the citizens of the United States might also agree with this conclusion, although having been thoroughly misled by the media, half believe that the media manufactures consent for liberal, not conservative interests. (1) Either way it would not be surprising if the general public, let alone progressive activists, identified the media as having an influential antidemocratic role in shaping American culture and politics. So given the commonsensical notion that the corporate-dominated mass media serves their elitist owners' best interests, not those of progressives, I was surprised to read that Professor G. William Domhoff's advice to the Left was to "Stop Blaming the Media!" -- a name he used for an article that was based upon a chapter in his book Changing The Powers That Be: How The Left Can Stop Losing and Win (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003). (2) This news was all the more surprising to me because Professor Domhoff is an influential critical theorist, and a pioneer of power elite research, authoring many seminal texts, two of his earliest being Who Rules America? and The Higher Circles (first published in 1967 and 1970, respectively). Being a supporter of both Domhoff's power elite work and Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's classic book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Parthenon, 1988), I was therefore interested in trying to comprehend why Domhoff would counsel the Left to stop blaming the media for their problems. While I agreed with many of the points Domhoff made in his article, I found myself in total disagreement with most of his conclusions, especially his final one that suggested that the mass media with due "cultivation" could "be used to good effect on many issues" by the Left. This article will therefore provide a critical analysis of Domhoff's views on the Left's future relations with the mainstream media. CONTINUED HERE http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker16.html Michael Barker Griffith School of Environment Griffith University Nathan Campus Brisbane QLD 4111 Australia Ph: 3735 6731 -- FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com M +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490 http://twitter.com/fn On Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/people/Frederick-Noronha/502514643 "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars." - Les Brown
