Overview

This thought-provoking book offers the most insightful critique of the relationship among the press, politics, and public life in decades. Disdain for politics today in the United States is almost universal. Condemnation of the press is rampant as well. Until we understand the modern condition of politics and journalism—and the cultural context in which they interact—says Michael Janeway, there’s small hope of either recovering its standing. Drawing on years of experience at the top levels of the news business and in politics and government, Janeway provides an integrated, insider’s critique of the profound changes in each of these professional worlds, showing how trends in each have contributed to deepening public alienation. From its confident post-World War Two era of world leadership, the United States entered a difficult period of turbulence and reversals in the 1960s and 1970s. With wit, clarity, and an eye for offbeat cultural indicators, Janeway examines the full complex of forces that have corroded our press, politics, and public life since then. The result, he argues, is a loss of substance and structure in public life as well as citizen connection to it, a vacuum all too easily filled by political entertainers, shallow coverage of “character,” and—engulfing the nation in convulsive crisis for a year of its history—the politics of scandal. None of today’s proposed remedies for the failings of our press or politcal system is adequate, Janeway argues, for none take full account of the integral relationship between the two spheres. In the absence of recognition of its buried democratic crisis, Janeway concludes, the United States has become a “republic of denial.”

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9780300089066

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Reviews

The most intelligent explanation anyone has yet offered of the painful dilemmas facing the American press in the late twentieth century. Alan Brinkley This shrewd, witty book is a must-read for anyone who wonders why both journalism and politics went so wrong so quickly. Ward Just Masterly.... [This book] graph[s] the seismic shifts altering the channels through which we are informed about public affairs. Tracy Lee Simmons, Washington Post Book World Fast-paced but far-reaching.... challenges tinkerers and tweakers to recognise that the nation is in deeper trouble than they might think. Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe

Author Information

Michael Janeway has been editor of the Boston Globe, executive editor of Atlantic Monthly, and dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He also served as special assistant to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance from 1977 to 1978. He is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and director of the National Arts Journalism Program.

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