Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media Book

1	From Cronkite's Complaint to Orwell's Oversight	1
	Whom to Believe?	2
	Cronkite and Other Critics	4
	Class, Race, and Gender	9
	Image Politics and Conservative Bias	13
	Monopoly Politics	18
	Do the Media Manage Our Minds?	21
	Beyond Orwell's 1984	24
2	"Freedom of the Press Belongs to the Man Who Owns One"	26
	A Favored Few	26
	Interlocking Control	29
	Many Voices, One Chorus	30
3	Who Controls the News?	33
	Calling the Tune: Owners	33
	Calling the Tune: Advertisers	35
	On the Line: Editors	37
	Self-Censorship: Reporters	40
	The Ruling Culture	42
	Suppressing the News	45
4	Objectivity and Government Manipulation	51
	The Myth of Objectivity	51
	Not Enough Time, Space, and Money?	55
	Maintaining Appearances	58
	Is It All Economics?	60
	Government Manipulation	61
5	The Big Sell	70
	The Consumer Ideology	71
	Selling the System	74
	Public Service for Private Interests	77
	Even Sports and Weather	79
6	Giving Labor the Business	83
	Business over Labor	83
	Nice Bosses, Crazy Strikers	87
	The Invisible Worker	92
7	"Liberal" Media, Conservative Bias	95
	Creating a "Conservative Mood"	96
	Populist Electorate, Conservative Outcome	101
	Pundits to the Right	103
	How to Discredit Protestors	105
8	The Media Fight the Red Menace	112
	Enter the Red Menace	112
	The Cold War	116
	The Creation of Joe McCarthy	119
	Rational Hysteria	121
	Twists and Turns	124
	Celebrating the Collapse of Communism	128
9	Doing the Third World	137
	The Vietnam Apology	138
	Murder in Chile	143
	Stomping on Grenada	148
10	For the New World Order	152
	The "Totalitarian" Sandinistas	152
	A Devil in Panama	157
	Celebrating the Massacre of Iraq	163
11	Propaganda Themes	172
	American Virtue and "Anti-Americanism"	172
	The Nonexistence of Imperialism	175
	"Moderate Authoritarian" Regimes	176
	Evil, Power-Hungry Leftists	179
	Economic "Failures"	184
	Democracy Is in the Eyes of the Beholder	186
	"Inferior" Peoples and Their Hopeless Ways	188
12	Methods of Misrepresentation	191
	Selectivity and Deliberate Omission	191
	Lies and Face-Value Transmission	194
	False Balancing	198
	Framing and Labeling	200
	The Greying of Reality	203
	Auxiliary Embellishments	205
	Placement	207
13	Culture, Control, and Resistance	211
	Capitalism and Culture	211
	The Limits of Orthodoxy	213
	Credibility and the "Liberal Bias"	218
	Between Conspiracy and Culture	224
	The Conflict Within	227
	Appendix: A Guide to Alternative Media	229
	Notes	233
	Index	255