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Rating: 
Summary: A latter-day I.F. Stone
Review: Danny Schechter's Media Wars is filled with promise and unrequited anticipation. After all, the veteran newsman landed one of the biggest fishes in the shrinking global media pond: the venerable Walter Cronkite wrote an introduction, or more accurately a 30-line "introductory statement," in which the Great Man decries the media's self-censorship. This reviewer is old enough to remember the discomfort Cronkite displayed in a documentary interview on his understanding of what the US had gotten itself into in the early years of Vietnam by the late I.F. Stone, who was in reality every inch the newsman that Cronkite became in mythology. Schechter is very much self-cast in the I.F. Stone mode, a gadfly to the politically conservative administration, conservative media outlets, and mainstream journalism in general. He asks the impertinent questions and questions the answers, just as I.F. Stone had done four decades earlier. Izzy Stone had I.F. Stone's Weekly, a hand-to-mouth operation with readership in the highest levels of government. Schechter employs a latter-day version, a weblog, to disseminate his views, and this book is full of these polemical pieces on every subject the writer can conceive concerning the so-called War on Terror, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the increasingly chilly feelings of the world toward America. And from time to time, he publishes other writers' viewpoints as well, an odd mixture of techniques-a collection of authors, oft-mentioned references to Schechter's own media-analysis organizations, many pages of his online diary, a political polemic, and, in the beginning of the book, a respectable scholarly effort to determine what kinds of news stories US media found interesting. Schechter's premise is that what could be a new cozy triangle between big media, big government and political leaders, and big industry, has developed in the War on Terror. The "News Dissector" is critical of conservative media programs, such as those found at Fox News, and the U.S. government's news management during the war in Afghanistan, which Schechter seems to consider illegitimate on all fronts. The author seems particularly vexed at US coverage of the Middle East, devoting about a fifth of the book to short chapters from a variety of sources, including one section written by Fatemah Farag of Al Ahram Weekly explaining the Arab worldview, and a useful chapter by Sky News' Jake Lynch on tips for avoiding bias when covering conflict which should be required reading for anyone covering news in the Middle East, especially those already working in the region as transnational reporters and broadcasters. In all, Schechter's book gives us too much information, a lot of it debatable, to be considered in a single dosage. The lack of an index makes the cross referencing of material impossible. But the most serious flaw may be the mixture of essays, diary entries, seemingly factual reporting, and guest chapters that give this book a hodge-podge feel. That's not to say the book is uninteresting, particularly for those predisposed to be critical of Western media, Western governments, and market economies. Though disjointed at times, the book does move along through the many styles and techniques that could leave readers dizzy.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: I would normally consider myself conservative, politically speaking, and I wasn't sure what I would think of Danny Schechter's book. Prior to reading it I had never heard of him, or mediachannel.org. That said, I found this book very thought provoking and I don't watch the news in the same way anymore. Schechter provides important questions for a news consumer to ask, and makes even a casual news watcher more critical of any inherent bias in the media. Perhaps because Schechter would call me a victim of American media, I found some of his Middle East commentary difficult to follow. I am probably not educated on those topics enough. Instead, I most appreciated the critiques of domestic 9/11 coverage. I also thought that at times the book seemed to be overly "selling" the author's website (mediachannel.org). After reading the book, I can appreciate why he is trying to popularize the site, but I thought there were just too many mentions of the site...it got in the way of what may have been more salient points. The book seemed a little long, toward the end. In a weird tangental way, this book is an interesting partner with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, as it asks many touchy questions regarding the media's role in US culture. In the end...it's worthwhile reading regardless of your political views, as long as you don't mind taking a critical eye toward the media.
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