The Long View

Let me preface this by noting that James Fallows is, undoubtedly, one of American journalism's treasures -- an astute, thoughtful, curious, and meticulous writer whose prolific body of work contains gems that should be the envy of every journalist working today.  Readers of this site, I'm sure, know that he is highly regarded here.

That said, it is something of a disservice to a whole community of media scholars and writers to trumpet Breaking the News -- the book that "Why Americans Hate the Media" was based on -- as if it said something no one had before.  When Fallows' book was published, for instance, Ellen Hume noted in the Columbia Journalism Review that

many media scholars before him have struggled to get the press's attention as they made the same points Fallows now makes in Breaking the News, including not just [Thomas] Patterson and [Kathleen Hall] Jamieson, but George Gerbner, Michael Schudson, Daniel Hallin, Kiku Adatto, and others. Relying more on anecdotes than on the actual existing research they've done that would validate his opinions, Fallows writes as if he's just returned from Mars to write a book from the clips, and he's shocked! shocked! to find that American journalism has gone to hell. 

Fallows' work was indeed "seminal," in part because it translated for the general public a way of viewing the media that they hadn't been acquainted with before but, also, because he had a platform and profile that few of his predecessors had or could ever have.  I view the first reason as easily justifiable -- attributable, of course, to Fallows' impressive talents as a writer -- but the second?  Let's just say I have some issues -- which, if Fallows' own work is any indication, he should share.

Again, I have enormous respect for the man, and I certainly don't think his views should be discounted because others were saying similar things.  (Indeed, I encourage more people to think and write about the media the way he does!)  But we shouldn't act as though he figured something out in 1996 that a bunch of rubes had simply missed.

Comments

[bend]

I disagree with all of this though; this is tripe.

[Ankush]

bend: ? Hard to argue with that...