Don't Shoot the Messenger: How our Growing Hatred of the Media Threatens Free Speech for All of Us Review
Don't Shoot the Messenger: How our Growing Hatred of the Media Threatens Free Speech for All of Us Feature
The First Amendment and the American news media are under siege. Loathed and distrusted by the public it hungers to serve, the media faces a backlash of unprecedented proportions. With wit and revealing tales from the trenches, Bruce Sanford, one of our leading First Amendment lawyers, shows that our hatred of the media has reached such heights that even judges and juries have turned against news organizations:
* Multimillion-dollar verdicts have been leveled against ABC and other media companies
* The Gannett Company paid Chiquita Brands International more than $10 million to avoid a morass of litigation over a series of articles built on the unauthorized interception of voice mail messages.
* In the Paula Jones case, Judge Susan Webber Wright called the media "disingenuous," "callous" and "driven by profits," slamming the door on access to information about the President of the United States.
In case after case, judges, dismayed by the media's newsgathering practices, are curtailing constitutional protections for the press while the Supreme Court maintains a stony silence.
When the First Amendment erodes in the courtroom, we all need a wake-up call. This lively and richly storied work is the first to help us understand the dangerous consequences of the disintegration of trust between the public and the news media. In a masterful twenty-year retrospective, Sanford sifts through historical evidence and polls to explore the root causes for the mounting hostility toward the media. He explains how our anger with the press has deepened during the 1990s and how we -- as well as the media -- contribute to the problem. Drawing on interviews with more than four hundred people -- from former Vice President Dan Quayle and scandal-scarred Donna Rice to such respected icons as David Broder and Eugene Roberts -- Sanford describes a dangerous dialectic: the media falsely stereotypes public figures, while the public encourages the caricatures. As consumers we drive up the salaries of star journalists, yet we despise their culture of celebrity. We crave media saturation, yet we are so unsatisfied with the result that we are willing to look the other way when the truth is silenced.
Bruce Sanford is no apologist for sloppy reporting or the vanities of the media. Yet there is something more important at stake. We are killing one of our most treasured national resources -- journalists with the courage to take on corruption or abuse of power wherever they flourish.
