Overview

Part memoir, part social history, Journalists and Their Shadows captures the deplorable state of the American media in our time--recording its deterioration, its moments of crisis and ultimately, its transformation as seen through the eyes of a journalist engaged at its very heart through all its phases. The press had a bad Cold War, Patrick Lawrence contends, and never recovered from it, having never acknowledged its errors and so unable to learn from them. Its dysfunctional relationship with the national security state today is strikingly reminiscent of how it was in the Cold War's earliest days. With remarkable fidelity, all the old errors are being repeated. As a result, the mainstream American media have entered into a period of profound transformation, in the course of which independent media are emerging as the profession's most dynamic sector--and represent, indeed, the promise of a brilliant future. A weave of three elements, Lawrence's book offers a searing cultural and political critique, punctuated by the kind of piquant detail only insiders can provide. He also makes the case for a way forward--an optimistic case based on the vitality now apparent among independent media. Here, too, he is at home, providing the book's most original coverage of this brave new world. He draws upon many years in the profession, a multitude of mainstream outlets ranging from his decades as foreign correspondent for the venerable International Herald Tribune to his work now as a columnist for a similar wide range of alternative news outlets such as Counterpunch, Consortium News et al. Shadows probes the psychological dilemma that must be understood if we are to address the current crisis. Journalists in our time are divided within themselves--driven to meet thoroughly professional but ideologically conformist standards, but on the other, subliminally struggling to breach the barriers that preclude the truths they know should be conveyed. This latter, as Jung has put it, is the journalist's shadow. Shadows' case for the reintegration of the divided journalist is striking and original. This record of the American media's increasingly shabby betrayal of the public trust sheds light on why the American public thought and thinks the way it does, how it has become aware that the truth it seeks is absent, and where and how it may yet be able to ferret it out. Here is a guide to the future, in fact, of journalism itself

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9781949762785

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Reviews

"""A vital, timely book to understand what's long been wrong with establishment media, which has grown far worse since 9/11. Reporters live vicariously through the powerful people they cover, failing to grasp the greater power they hold to cut the powerful to size. Corporate journalists promote a US foreign policy agenda rather than portraying the drama of international conflict with no dog in the fight. Having worked in mainstream journalism as Patrick Lawrence, and having experienced the divided-self he so well describes in these pages, his work resonates with reporters who've taken refuge in independent media. Would that more corporate reporters, pushed by the independents, have the conscience to understand Lawrence and free themselves, and the public."" --JOE LAURIA ""For anyone who takes seriously the Jeffersonian assertion that a free press is the essential condition of a government of the free, this quite brilliant and thankfully pithy alarm bell of a book by veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Lawrence is an indispensable read. A joy to read by a master of the craft of literary journalism honed over decades writing for the sophisticated audience of the International Herald Tribune and others who took the fate of the world seriously. Lawrence is surprisingly optimistic about the prospect for a new generation of working stiff journalists to salvage this indispensable craft despite or because of the wild wired world of the internet."" --ROBERT SCHEER ""Patrick Lawrence draws from a lifetime of hard-won experience and wisdom to chronicle, eulogize, and resurrect the spirit of an American journalism dedicated to the truth. Journalists and Their Shadows is a sober and heartening read in these cataclysmic times!""--AARON GOOD ""Patrick Lawrence has written an outstanding, eloquent book about journalism. It is angry and bracing and wise, and it gives us hope. It says the subversion of much of our craft to raw propaganda is not yet complete and a 'Fifth Estate' of independent truth-tellers is rising. One truth is enduring: that we journalists are nothing if not servants of people, never of power."" --JOHN PILGER ""Patrick Lawrence, as witty and cunning as they come, has written both a rapturous and knife-wielding history of journalism in the post WWII days of America's containment. His ove for our flawed profession and his delight in having been in the mix of it makes his regrets and criticisms ring with only the best of intentions.. It also is a hell of a lot of fun to read."" --SEYMOUR HERSH ""Patrick Lawrence's cri de coeur leaps out of decades of variegated - often painful - personal experience in the trenches. He confronts his Jungian ""shadow"" with disarming honesty and challenges fellow journalists to integrate their own into an ""undivided self"" able to resist pressure to conform. Gentle with the scalpel, Lawrence points to hopeful signs that integrity may one day rescue the profession."" --RAY MCGOVERN ""This richly evocative book masquerades as the memoir of a globe-trotting foreign correspondent. At heart it is much more: the poignant story of how an idealistic reporter watched his beloved profession collapse. This is a vivid account of how American journalism degenerated into public relations, what effect that has had on our democracy, and what we can do about it."" --STEPHEN KINZER ""Today, American mainstream journalism has lost all credibility due to its role as an agent of power. From a long personal effort to see and tell the truth in both mainstream and independent news outlets, Patrick Lawrence makes an eloquent plea for the revival of honest journalism able to bring Americans into the diverse world of the 21st century, a world of understanding and mutual respect rather than arrogant attempts to assert U.S. will. His hope lies in the determination of journalists themselves to assert their own inner integrity, to find their true selves by devotion to the truth."" --DIANA JOHNSTONE"

Author Information

Patrick Lawrence is an author, essayist, and lecturer. He was previously a correspondent abroad for International Herald Tribune. He now writes foreign affairs commentary for a variety of publications. His previous books include Japan: A Reinterpretation (Pantheon; NYT Notable Book, Overseas Press Club Award), Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon; a Globalist Top 10 Book), and Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale; a Globalist Top 10 Book, L.A. Book Festival, honorable mention).

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