“Whatever your first issue of concern,” media scholar Robert McChesney writes, “media had better be your second, because without change in the media, progress in your primary area is far less likely.”
Media concentration has reached unprecedented proportions in America. Where we once had a vigorous “press” that defined and defended the public interest, we now have a massive but monolithic “media” that obscures it.
The Center for American Progress and The American Prospect have joined together to sponsor the forum that follows, in which McChesney and three other leading media analysts ponder how we got where we are and what can be done about it.
In the future, a series of public forums — the first, co-sponsored with the World Policy Institute, is to be held at the New School University in New York on July 13 — will examine the implications of media concentration for American democracy and explore the possibilities of building on recent organizing successes to reclaim the public sphere for the public interest.
The New School event will also feature the debut screening of Out Foxed, filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s searing look behind the scenes at FOX News.