Overview

The power and status of the press in America reached new heights after spectacular reporting triumphs in the segregated South, in Vietnam, and in Washington during the Watergate years. Then new technologies created instantaneous global reporting which left the government unable to control the flow of information to the nation. The press thus became a formidable rival in critical struggles to control what the people know and when they know it. But that was more power than the press could handle--and journalism crashed toward new lows in public esteem and public purpose. The dazzling new technologies, profit-driven owners, and celebrated editors, reporters, and broadcasters made it possible to bypass older values and standards of journalism. Journalists reveled in lusty pursuit after the power of politics, the profits of entertainment and trespass into privacy. Richard Reeves was there at the rise and at the fall, beginning as a small-town editor, becoming the chief political correspondent of the New York Times and then a best-selling author and award-winning documentary filmmaker. He tells the story of a tribe that lost its way. From the Pony Express to the Internet, he chronicles what happened to the press as America accelerated into uncertainty, arguing that to survive, the press must go back to doing what it was hired to do long ago: stand as outsiders watching government and politics on behalf of a free people busy with their own affairs.

Full Product Details

Author:   Richard Reeves
Publisher:   Harvard University Press
Imprint:   Harvard University Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 1.00cm , Length: 21.00cm
Weight:   0.204kg
ISBN:  

9780674616233

ISBN 10:   0674616235
Pages:   164
Publication Date:   01 October 1999
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Journalist Reeves has been chief political correspondent for the New York Times and an editor and columnist for New York magazine and Esquire ...We might listen, then, when he takes the high moral ground journalistically, arguing that after its spectacular successes reporting segregation, Vietnam, and Watergate, the press has become less of a watchdog and more willing to bare its fangs at politicians (who have become easy targets) while letting up on corporate conglomerates (who increasingly own newspapers and broadcasting companies and are more likely to bite back with lawsuits). Meanwhile, the press gives us the soft stories that we apparently want. In this short, gracefully argued book, Reeves offers convincing reasons for this decline and a plea for journalism to return to its roots. Strongly recommended for larger public and academic libraries. -- Jim G. Burns Library Journal

Reporting the news was once a fairly simple and, for Reeves, exciting and honorable task: get the story, get it right, report it. Today, however, journalism 'is in a crisis of change and redefinition'...In its post-Watergate zealousness to portray all politicians as crooks and all politics as corrupt, [journalism] helped create a public mood of cynical lack of interest in public affairs...[But] Reeves sees a continuing role for journalism, and that is simply to tell what 'you and I need to keep our freedom--accurate timely information on laws and wars, police and politicians, taxes and toxics'...[Reeves] gets the story and gets it right. Nice reporting.--Kirkus Reviews Richard Reeves, a journalist of good sense and long experience, avoids both pretentiousness and what he calls 'Old Fartism' while asking whether journalism as he has known it can survive. He is more concerned than alarmed, but warns that big money, the entertainment ethos, and hubris threaten to swamp the reportorial tradition--that is, the tradition of the outsiders who try to tell the truth about what the public needs to know. but he invokes history to show that journalism has encountered and persisted through bad times before.--Columbia Journalism Review [Reeves] succinctly covers many of those trends that worry other critics of the profession: the ever-increasing takeover of newspapers by corporations, the emphasis on profits at the expense of newsroom resources, the disproportionate reliance on advertising rather than subscriber revenue, the shift in focus from news to entertainment. What perhaps distinguishes Reeves' book from that of previous press critics is his discussion of the implications of technology...Reeves' book would make an excellent textbook or supplemental reading for any course dealing with new media or with media management. It's a quick read, and should provide hours and hours of classroom discussion.--Daniel J. Foley Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly What the People Know avoids the perils of droning pendantry. It is fast-moving and full of history and anecdotes...Reeves wisely spends much of his energy focusing on the kind of corporate corruption of journalism that has not really permeated the consciousness of an American public willing to believe every conspiracy theory about the media except the most dangerous.--Mark Jurkowitz Boston Globe Journalist Reeves has been chief political correspondent for the New York Times and an editor and columnist for New York magazine and Esquire...We might listen, then, when he takes the high moral ground journalistically, arguing that after its spectacular successes reporting segregation, Vietnam, and Watergate, the press has become less of a watchdog and more willing to bare its fangs at politicians (who have become easy targets) while letting up on corporate conglomerates (who increasingly own newspapers and broadcasting companies and are more likely to bite back with lawsuits). Meanwhile, the press gives us the soft stories that we apparently want. In this short, gracefully argued book, Reeves offers convincing reasons for this decline and a plea for journalism to return to its roots. Strongly recommended for larger public and academic libraries.--Jim G. Burns Library Journal Journalist Richard Reeves gets right to the point: the American press has fouled its own nest by trying to give readers what pollsters and focus groups say they want, rather than what readers really need: hard news about what is going on around them. Entertainment, not news, drives the news media these days, he says. Even those who focus on hard news from government officials have done so with a corrosive cynicism 'and self-destructive journalistic hubris' that created two problems: it increased public scorn of politics and diminished the press at the same time...A highly respected reporter, columnist, author and professor of journalism, Reeves has written in What the People Know a lively, brisk indictment of the rocky path the craft has followed lately.--Jack Betts Charlotte Observer Journalists are romantics. They look back with pride to the heyday of their craft, when reporters in snap-brim fedoras, their sleeves pulled up by armbands, could be found fearlessly taking notes in war zones and corrupt city halls...Richard Reeves, who worked his way up from the Newark Evening News to become the chief political correspondent for the New York Times, treasures those days too. He deeply regrets what has happened to the American press in his lifetime. Newspapers have been the playthings of rich owners for decades; but now, much worse, they are small and expendable parts of huge entertainment empires...Can [the press] scramble back again? Only, Mr. Reeves believes, if journalists recover their old role of being onlookers and outsiders, rather than imagining themselves as central players in the body politic...They do not need to wear those fedoras. But they do need to watch, and write.--The Economist Reeves feels that a lot of journalism has been 'blood, fire, sports, sex, mixed with stories to make you feel good about yourself and bad about your government.' But as an experienced reporter for the New York Times and the creator of award-winning television documentaries, he still believes that journalists are crucial, irreplaceable contributors to a democratic society. [This book] reconciles his skepticism and faith with vivid arguments of seasoned optimism...Reeves's seasoned, passionately optimistic treatise should inform and inspire both media consumers and journalists alike.--Publishers Weekly Richard Reeves is a respected veteran journalist who wants fellow journalists to concentrate on ferreting out the truth without fear or favor. That sounds like a mundane topic for a book. After all, what else would journalists be expected to do? But Reeves's What the People Know is anything but mundane because so many journalists either have no idea how to ferret out the truth, or seem to have forgotten that part of their job...[This book]--part personal reminiscence, part media critique...[is] worthwhile [reading] for anybody who cares about Reeves's illustrious career or the state of journalism.--Steve Weinberg Christian Science Monitor

Veteran journalist and author Reeves (Running in Place, 1996; President Kennedy, 1993; etc.) reports on the state of the press (print and television). He is guardedly pessimistic. Reporting the news was once a fairly simple and, for Reeves, exciting and honorable task: get the story, get it right, report it. Today, however, journalism is in a crisis of change and redefinition. The reasons for this crisis are complex and interrelated. Technology, particularly the Internet, has made information instantaneously available to just about anyone. How do older media like newspapers compete? The answer has become to report on what the public wants; find out what attracts people and feed it back to them. And what the public wants increasingly is short, untroubling entertainment. So we get coverage of scandals, entertainers, health tips ( evening news without news ), while more important events go underreported. Between 1992 and 1996, for instance, network television reporting on foreign stories, measured in minutes, dropped by almost two-thirds. Exacerbating this move toward news-lite is the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few huge corporations: Westinghouse, General Electric, etc. News operations are minuscule parts of such corporations, but they are not immune to the corporate demand for profits. How does news make a profit? Give the public what it wants. Finally, journalism itself is in part to blame for its own predicament. In its post-Watergate zealousness to portray all politicians as crooks and all politics as corrupt, it helped create a public mood of cynical lack of interest in public affairs. Despite these problems, all is not lost. Reeves sees a continuing role for journalism, and that is simply to tell what you and I need to keep our freedom - accurate timely information on laws and wars, police and politicians, taxes and toxics. Much of what Reeves says is familiar, and the pieces don't always hold together, but in the end he gets the story and gets it right. Nice reporting. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Richard Reeves is the author of ten books, including President Kennedy: Profile of Power. He is a syndicated columnist and teaches at the University of Southern California.

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