Inventing Reality
The Politics of News Media

Publisher:  St. Martin's Press, New York, USA
Year Published:  1993  
Pages:  274pp   ISBN:  0-312-02013-9
Library of Congress Number:  PN4888.P6P37 1992   Dewey:  302.23'0973-dc20
Parenti sets out to demonstrate how the news media distort important aspects of social and political life and why they do.



Table of Contents

1. From Cronkite's Complaint to Orwell's Oversight
Whom to Believe?
Cronkite and Other Critics
Class, Race, and Gender
Imagine Politics and Conservative Bias
Monopoly Politics
Do the Media Manage Our Minds?
Beyond Orwell's 1984

2. "Freedom of the Press Belongs to the Man Who Owns One"
A Favored Few
Interlocking Control
Many Voices, One Chorus

3. What Controls the News?
Calling the Tune: Owners
Calling the Tune: Advertisers
On the Line: Editors
Self-Censorship: Reporters
The Ruling Culture
Suppressing the News

4. Objectivity and Government Manipulation
The Myth of Objectivity
Not Enough Time, Space, and Money?
Maintaining Appearances
Is it All Economics?
Government Manipulation

5. The Big Sell
The Consumer Ideology
Selling the System
Public Service for Private Interests
Even Sports and Weather

6. Giving Labor the Business
Business over Labor
Nice bosses, Crazy Strikers
The Invisible Worker

7. "Liberal" Media, Conservative Bias
Creating a "Conservative Mood"
Populist Electorate, Conservative
Outcome
Pundits to the Right
How to Discredit Protesters

8. The Media Fight the Red Menace
Enter the Red Menace
The Cold War
The Creation of Joe McCarthy
Rational Hysteria
Twists and Turns
Celebrating the Collapse of Communism

9. Doing the Third World
The Vietnam Apology
Murder in Chile
Stomping on Grenada

10. For the New World Order
The "Totalitarian" Sandinistas
A Devil in Panama
Celebrating the Massacre for Iraq

11. Propaganda Themes
American Virtue and "Anti-Americanism"
The Nonexistence of Imperialism
"Moderate Authoritarian" Regimes
Evil, Power-Hungry Leftists
Economics "Failures"
Democracy Is in the Eyes of the Beholder
"Inferior" Peoples and Their Hopeless Ways

12. Methods of Misrepresentation
Selectivity and Deliberate Omission
Lies and Face-Value Transmission
False Balancing
Framing and Labeling
The Greying of Reality
Auxiliary Embellishments
Placement


13. Culture, Control, and Resistance
Capitalism and Culture
The Limits of Orthodoxy
Credibility and the "Liberal Bias"
Between Conspiracy and Culture
The Conflict Within

Appendix: A Guide to Alternative Media
Notes
Index

Subject Headings

• Advertising
• Advertising Expenditures
• Alternative Media
• Bias
• Capitalism
• Dissent
• Dissidents
• East Timor
• El Salvador
• Election Campaigns
• Elections
• Electoral Politics
• Ideology
• Imperialism
• Iraq/Media Coverage
• Media Analysis & Criticism
• Media Bias
• Media Coverage/Labour
• Media Ownership
• Media Ownership/Concentration of
• News
• News Bias
• Objectivity
• Panama
• Poland
• Politics
• Politics & Media
• Propaganda
• Protest
• Right, The
• Self Censorship
• Soviet Union
• Stereotyping
• U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Vietnam War
• Violence