Kurtz, Howard. Media Circus: The Trouble with America's Newspapers.
New York: Times Books - Random House, 1994. 434 pages.
Here's the scoop on the 16 chapters: 1. How Donald Trump led reporters
by the nose with calculated antics. 2. Newspapers miss the HUD scandal.
3. Newspapers miss a much bigger savings and loan scandal. 4. Bad reporting
on race relations. 5. Hiring new reporters by skin color, which excuses
more bad reporting on race relations. 6. Plagiarism, fabrication, and
other ethical issues. 7. Reporting on the private lives of public figures.
8. The gay issue. 9. Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the press. 10. Gulf
War reporters get outflanked by Pentagon censorship. 11-13. Three chapters
on political journalism (boring, boring, and boring). 14. Newspapers lose
readers, and are gobbled up by heartless, advertising-hungry conglomerates.
15. "Pink flamingo journalism" (the trend toward lifestyle articles and
similar fluff). 16. How to improve the situation.
This book is helpful, but Kurtz himself pushes some trivia. There is
no mention, for example, of the nearly 400 members of the media who have
been co-opted by the Council on Foreign Relations. They get to go to CFR's
off-the-record meetings, where they learn how to brown-nose the elites who
are taking over our world. Race and gay issues, one suspects, are merely a
smoke screen to divert from more fundamental class issues. But this never
occurs to Kurtz; he's been co-opted by 12 years at the Washington Post.
ISBN 0-8129-6356-3
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