Rating: 
Summary: Don't be fooled.
Review: Abolutely right. I have played the political game and Fallows has nailed how the media work and what they care about. The media isn't basied, its just lazy, greedy and self interested. If you realy are interested in fixing this country, from the right or the left, READ THIS BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: media wanting power
Review: Appalled at the biases, distortions and omissions in the media, which have been worsening since 9-11, I recently launched on a campaign of study in regard to learning about the deterioration of the media and the influence of corporate control - and what we can do to counter it. This is one of the best, most informative and most readable of the six books on the subject I've read. I can't emphasize enough how important it is, how much our corporate-run media influence political thinking, decisionmaking and voting and influence not only the outcome of elections but the agenda and actions of politicians - and how motivated we need to become in order to counter it, to become informed about political realities rather than propaganda and myth, and as a country, to become more of a democracy and less of a plutocracy. The biggest difficult we face is that the media itself is not likely to publicize its own corruption, and is actively blocking attempts of people concerned with these issues inform the public. I also highly recommend the books on media disinformation and reform by Robert McChesney, including his mini-books Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy and Our Media, Not Theirs.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad, But Off Base
Review: Fallows has a journalist's way with words in this book. He clearly makes a persuasive argument, its just that it does not wash. For example, he clearly faults the press for its coverage of the Clinton administration, yet to accept his argument as true one would have to support the Clinton administration policies and expect a particular type of coverage BEFORE analyzing that coverage. Fallows seems to assume that just because the Clinton administration did not receive glowing press on everything it did that the press undermines Democracy. I'm simplifying for this review, but this problem remains: Fallows uses a priori assumptions and anecdotal evidence to back his claims. Its simply not enough. For those wanting a more nuanced look at the press as an anti-democratic institution see Jim Kuypers's book, Press Bias and Politics. Kuypers studied in detail over 100 different mainstream papers and over 700 articles. In his chapters covering Clinton he shows how the bias of the press both helped and harmed President Clinton. His basic assertion is that the mainstream press advances a narrow range of privileged discourse, and that politicians who step to the left or right of that will be ignored or smeared. He does this by examining speeches that politicians gave, and then examining in the same way the press coverage of those speeches. No other book on press bias does this that I know of.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and insightful
Review: Fallows has written a very thoughtful and insightful analysis of the sorry state of the news business. He exposes among other things the sordid, money grubbing reality behind the Sunday morning talking head "news" programs and why Sam Donaldson and his ilk, for example, always were more interested in provoking a fight between two guests than in having an illuminating discussion of views and issues between guests on the "This Morning" program on Sunday mornings. There's nothing terribly new in Fallows' book in that probably every point he makes has been made elswhere. What is valuable about the book is that it pulls a lot of the criticisms of contemporary news coverage into a comprehensive critique of the news business. Sadly, one despairs of any improvement given the wide denial -- well documented by Fallows -- by prominent members of the elite media of any problem with the way they cover and select the news. This book ought to be required reading for all journalists and anyone who cares deeply about the coverage of the news and its effect on our political system. It's hard to imagine any of our prominent journalists changing their views on this subject given the strong institutional instinct to defend their current practices. The only hope it seems to me is that a new generation of journalists will eschew the misguided practices of their peers and create a new journalism that is less self-centered, less self-serving and more useful to most Americans. The paperback edition of the book, which I read, was published shortly after Fallows had assumed the reins at US News. It would be interesting to see a follow up to this book in a few years in which Fallows shares with us his experiences in trying to implement his advocacy of "civic journalism" in real life. I suspect that it's a lot harder than Fallows suspects.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and insightful
Review: Fallows has written a very thoughtful and insightful analysis of the sorry state of the news business. He exposes among other things the sordid, money grubbing reality behind the Sunday morning talking head "news" programs and why Sam Donaldson and his ilk, for example, always were more interested in provoking a fight between two guests than in having an illuminating discussion of views and issues between guests on the "This Morning" program on Sunday mornings. There's nothing terribly new in Fallows' book in that probably every point he makes has been made elswhere. What is valuable about the book is that it pulls a lot of the criticisms of contemporary news coverage into a comprehensive critique of the news business. Sadly, one despairs of any improvement given the wide denial -- well documented by Fallows -- by prominent members of the elite media of any problem with the way they cover and select the news. This book ought to be required reading for all journalists and anyone who cares deeply about the coverage of the news and its effect on our political system. It's hard to imagine any of our prominent journalists changing their views on this subject given the strong institutional instinct to defend their current practices. The only hope it seems to me is that a new generation of journalists will eschew the misguided practices of their peers and create a new journalism that is less self-centered, less self-serving and more useful to most Americans. The paperback edition of the book, which I read, was published shortly after Fallows had assumed the reins at US News. It would be interesting to see a follow up to this book in a few years in which Fallows shares with us his experiences in trying to implement his advocacy of "civic journalism" in real life. I suspect that it's a lot harder than Fallows suspects.
Rating:
Summary: good for journalism critiques
Review: Fallows, makes a very persuasive arguement, I agree completely. Had it been my choice of a book to read, I might have enjoyed it more. Not much of a journalism fan. Well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Liberal vs. Conservative? No Contest
Review: I first met James Fallows online in the early '90s, and then in person several times. For a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard grad, he was surprisingly in touch with the realities I knew as a moderate Westerner living in the East. He was kind enough to give me a copy of Breaking the News, and I found it to be a great read. It offered new perspectives and excellent explanations on the sorry state of today's journalism, far beyond the traditional but simplistic explanation of "liberal bias." Jim's perspective truly transcends the partisan and raises issues above the divisive fray that almost tragically seems to divide our great country. Although critics may contend that Jim offers a liberal apologist's view that liberal bias is not the primary problem (or even much of a problem at all), even my friends who are staunch conservatives should find little to disagree with and much to learn in "Breaking the News."
Rating:
Summary: Is the Pot Calling the Kettle Black?
Review: James Fallows certainly deserves credit for writing an interesting and clearly presentedargument for media reform. However, Fallows' tenure at U.S. News has thus far failed to deliver any of the reforms he touts in his book. A recent study I did of U.S. News articles for 1997 shows that most articles regarding American politics still follow the "Game" schema. That is, the focus is on who's winning and who's losing rather than what the issues are. To be sure, Fallows has brought a bit more coverage of the issues themselves, and more significant change may take time. Still, Fallows is quick to criticize journalists turned television pundits in his book. Yet Gloria Borger, a U.S. News columnist, points out at the end of each and every column she writes that she is also a CBS political analyst (read: pundit). Fallows has some good ideas, but as he is learning first hand, when trying to put theory into practice, things sometimes get lost in the translation.
Rating:
Summary: A Damning and True Account of the American Media
Review: James Farrows account of contemporary American media is a painstakingly detailed and thoughtful account of how and where the media has gone awry, and why. In his careful deconstruction of the media, he explains how the politicization of the news is not necessarily as a result of an increasingly corrupt public sector but rather as a result of media celebrities incapable or unwilling to keep up with the very news they're reporting. He also discusses at length the buying of journalists (through the pundit lecture circuit) and the disenfranchisement of the American people from their government as a result of the media's irresponsibility. Farrows looks not only at contemporary circumstances, but examines the history which led us to this point, and how technology, money and the expansion of available knowledge at such an accelerated pace serve to encourage a waning of professional ethics on the part of the media. He also looks at how a media lacking credibility which chooses to focus on issues tangential to the public interest undermines the American public and the objectives of American democracy. I recommend it for anyone interested in the changing role of media in American life.
Rating:
Summary: media wanting power
Review: The book Breaking The News:How the Media Undermine American Democracy by James Fallows is a well written book. It tells about issues that we should hear and it may change how the people view the media and how the media have control and why we shouldn't always believe what we hear on the news. The author tells about how the media controls how we see our goverment. It's not so much about how important issues should be resolved like health care, education, etc.,but more on what is controversial about it. It has also affects the political system. The media and journalist only show or write about issues that will get people's attention so that they could get the money that they want, not so much to find a soulution. They don't care so much about the issues, all they just want is the attention and the money. This affects how people view the polical system.
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