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News For All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media - Paperback | Diverse Reads

News For All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media

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A new, sweeping narrative history of American news media that puts race at the center of the story
 
From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies.

Written in an exciting, story-driven style and replete with memorable portraits of journalists, both famous and obscure, News for All the People weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system—such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system.

Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.

ISBN-13: 9781844671113

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Verso Books

Publication Date: 09-11-2012

Pages: 476

Product Dimensions: 8.10(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.20(d)

Juan González is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for commentary and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is the co-host of the nationally syndicated TV and radio show Democracy Now! and is a staff columnist for New York’s Daily News. His previous books include Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America; Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse; and Roll Down Your Window: Stories from a Forgotten America. Joseph Torres is the senior advisor for government and external affairs for Free Press, the national media reform organization. Before joining Free Press, he worked as deputy director at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was a journalist for several years. He lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I The Age of Newspapers

1 "Barbarous Indians" and "Rebellious Negroes" 19

2 In the Mail: The Post Office, the Press and the Mass Political Party 31

3 Inciting to Riot: The Age of Jackson 41

II Rebel Voices

4 A New Democratic Press 63

5 Priests, Mobs, and Know-Nothings: The Early Spanish-Language Press 69

6 The Indian "War of Words 93

7 To Plead Our Own Cause: The Early Black Press 109

8 "The Chinese Must Go!" 123

III The Age of News Networks

9 Wiring the News 137

10 The Progressive Era and the Colored Press 161

IV The Age of Broadcasting

11 Words with Wings 185

12 Trouble in the Streets 209

13 Other Voices: Amos 'n' Andy, the "Sunshine Lady" and Los Madrugadores 231

14 Uniting the Home Front 257

15 The Color Line and the Public Interest: The Post-War Period 277

16 Fierce Rebellion, Furious Reaction: 1963-2003 301

V The Age of the Internet

17 Controlling the Means of Transmission: Old Media's Fall and New Media's Rise 343

Acknowledgements 377

Notes 379

Index 431