Slick Spins and Fractured Facts - Hardcover

Rivers, Caryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 023110152X ISBN 13: 9780231101523

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Studies the ways the media put their own spin on the news of our sound-bite generation. This book shows how the media follow their biased agenda, unaware of the deep wells of history, prejudice, and primal fear that inform their version of reality, making the reader think twice about the news.

About this title

About the Author

Caryl Rivers is Professor of Journalism at Boston University.

From the Back Cover

This book presents a raucous wealth of examples showing how the interests, values, and viewpoints of this close-knit group inform the stories that appear again and again in the American media.

Reviews

A spirited reading of the daily papers, with an eye to uncovering the cultural and political forces that shape the news. Most Americans, writes Boston University journalism professor Rivers, do not follow current events. This is less out of ignorance than because the makers of news and of newspapers do not represent their interests: ``Working-class voices--not to mention those of poor people--are rarely heard on op-ed pages. The exotic minutiae of foreign policy, the endless inside-the-beltway battles, are the stuff that interests elite journalists.'' What also interests elite journalists, she argues, are sensational stories that play to cultural myths that are not borne out in reality; in this vein, she examines matters like the so-called bell curve, which excited so much attention a couple of years ago, and which she believes reflects racist attitudes among the power elite and the media that serve it; and much-trumpeted stories like the one that claimed women over the age of 35 have as much chance of being killed by terrorists as they do of getting married. (Not true, Rivers says: The claim is the result of bad math being ``hyped into a phony trend.'') Rivers's aim is wide, and sometimes scattershot; she notes that few people will soon forget Lorena Bobbitt, but that the ``thousands of women who are shot, beaten, maimed, and burned by their male partners each year'' will forever remain nameless. She doesn't acknowledge that the Bobbitt case was in fact newsworthy if only for its unusualness. Still, she undertakes thoughtful analyses of a number of cases to show how the media becomes an actor in making the news, and she is usually convincing, especially when she takes on notions of objectivity in news reporting--reporting that, she argues, is inherently biased in favor of the status quo. Students of the media will want to have a good look at this deconstruction of the headlines. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 023110152X
• ISBN 13: 9780231101523
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250