A Washington Post Notable BookAn eye-opening account of how Congress today really works—and how it doesn’t— Act of Congress focuses on two of the major players behind the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008: colorful, wisecracking congressman Barney Frank, and careful, insightful senator Christopher Dodd, both of whom met regularly with Robert G. Kaiser during the eighteen months they worked on the bill. I...

With a New ForewordIn So Damn Much Money, veteran Washington Post editor and correspondent Robert Kaiser gives a detailed account of how the boom in political lobbying since the 1970s has shaped American politics by empowering special interests, undermining effective legislation, and discouraging the country’s best citizens from serving in office. Kaiser traces this dramatic change in our political system through the colorful story of Gerald S. J....

Freedom of the press is a primary American value. Good journalism builds communities, arms citizens with important information, and serves as a public watchdog for civic, national, and global issues. But what happens when the news turns its back on its public role?Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, and Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor and senior correspondent, report on a growing crisis in American journalism. From the corporatization that leads...

The digital revolution has forever changed American journalism, and not for the better. Robert Kaiser, former managing editor of The Washington Post, writes in his new Brookings Essay that the changing media landscape is not only a threat to traditional news, but to the future of democracy. A news industry without a viable business model, distracted by the need to attract eyeballs and discover new revenue streams, could lose the ability to provide the balanced, comprehensive, and investiga...

The Book That Every Citizen and Journalist Should Read“What this book does better than any single book on media history, ethics, or practice isweave . . . [together] why media audiences have fled and why new technology and megacorporate ownership are putting good journalism at risk.” —Rasmi Simhan, Boston Globe“Kovach and Rosenstiel’s essays on each [element] are concise gems, filled with insights worthy of becoming axiomatic. . . . The book should become es...

A New York Times –bestselling in-depth look at how propaganda is implemented in contemporary American politics."I don't know any journalist like Sharyl Attkisson. She has no fear and she doesn't stop until she gets all of the facts, like an old-fashioned gumshoe detective." —Greta Van SusterenBehind most major political stories there is an agenda: to destroy an idea or the people advancing it. May...

A stinging polemic that traces the destructive monopolization of the Internet by Google, Facebook and Amazon, and that proposes a new future for musicians, journalists, authors and filmmakers in the digital age.Move Fast and Break Things is the riveting account of a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs who in the 1990s began to hijack the original decentralized vision of the Internet, in the process creating three monopoly firms—Facebook, Amazon, and G...

A timely new edition of the classic journalism text, now featuring updated material on the importance of reporting in the age of media mistrust and fake news—and how journalists can use technology to navigate its challengesMore than two decades ago, the Committee of Concerned Journalists gathered some of America’s most influential newspeople and asked them, “What is journalism for?” Through exhaustive research, surveys, interviews, and public forums, the committee ...

Can real news survive in an era of social media and spin? An updated edition of the "smart, provocative introduction to media and American politics."—Paul Freedman, author of Campaign Advertising and American DemocracyFor over thirty years, News: The Politics of Illusion has not simply reflected the political communication field—it has played a major role in shaping it. Today, the familiar news organizations of the legacy press a...

In July 1997, twenty-five of America's most influential journalists sat down to try and discover what had happened to their profession in the years between Watergate and Whitewater. What they knew was that the public no longer trusted the press as it once had. They were keenly aware of the pressures that advertisers and new technologies were putting on newsrooms around the country. But, more than anything, they were aware that readers, listeners, and viewers — the people who use the news —...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known-a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the po...

Is fake news being spread through social media as part of an information war? Are political operatives publishing disinformation to smear the opposition and help their own agendas? Who creates fake news, how does it spread, and can it be stopped?What are the real world effects of fake news stories that go viral? Did it affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election? Or is ‘fake news’ a fake problem, designed to justify tighter control over the mechanisms of sharing informatio...