Critical Review of The Problem of the Media by Robert McChesney and Bad News by Tom Fenton

The importance of systematic analysis of the media cannot be stressed enough. In any global society, the media system is essential to political power, but whether that power is wielded by or over the people depends highly upon the institutional structure of the system itself. In contemporary American capitalist democracy, the media system is essential to the economy and therefore the entire political process. However, this centrality to our current way of life and government should not allow the media to escape criticism; rather, the magnitude and significance of the media insists that we continuously and even unsympathetically assess and rewrite our media policy in order to consistently demand our government to serve its constituents to their fullest potential. Two texts, The Problem of the Media by Robert McChesney and Bad News by Tom Fenton undertake this enormous task and attempt to enlighten the American public of the weaknesses in our current news media system, and to provide the tools necessary for productive critique and analysis of our own society. Like its human counterparts, in order to be healthy a democracy must be continually examined, its deficiencies corrected accordingly based upon new emerging technologies and theories. In light of events of the past decades, American democracy must be reevaluated and possibly amended or modified. The policies currently in place need to be questioned and tested, and anything found to be detrimental to the greater good of society as a whole (and not just its upper echelons) must be discarded in favor of more equitable guidelines. The general public believes that a system based upon capitalism is a given, and the only possible way for an affluent civilization to operate. Yet this overriding force which guides our lives is, in the grand scheme of things, only a modern phenomenon, albeit a deeply ingrained and dominant one. Both McChesney and Fenton find grievous faults with the current system of market-based media and ask their audience not to accept this as standard practice for a healthy democracy which enables the utmost amount of equality.