Presidental Elections & Candidates, Communications - General & Miscellaneous, Mass Media & Politics, U.S. Politics & Government - General & Miscellaneous
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Overview
"In the pages that follow, we trace the emergence of a place that looks like a real democracy, and a real country, but is in fact a construct, like reality but not real. It is Virtual America."The new technologies of the 1990s, Ed Diamond and Robert Silverman argue, have helped create a blowhard culture, a talk-show politics driven by instant news analysis, over-reliance on public-opinion polls and focus groups, the power of Know-Nothing call-in shows, and the unchecked gossip of online computer networks.
White House to Your House is a fast-paced account of contemporary media coverage of national politics during a time when the top two books on the best-seller list were by Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. Included are lively analyses of what's behind the image makers' takeover of the old Washington policy-making machinery, how Bill Clinton prevailed in 1992 only to lose both his good press and his job approval ratings less than two years later, what the rise of right-wing populism from Ross Perot to Newt Gingrich signifies, how the press struggled to identify Hilary Rodham Clinton, why health care reform was defeated on the front pages of America's newspapers without coming to a vote in the Congress, who makes up the audiences for talk radio and why they're angry, and the effects of proliferating television channels on political coverage.
A new epilogue carries the narrative through the 1996 presidential campaign, and the development of on-line Web sites by the candidates, special-interest groups, and news media. The epilogue also assesses the future of both Internet politics and digital journalism.
Editorials
Booknews
An account of contemporary media coverage of national politics, from the 1992 election to the Republican victories of November 1994, drawing on interviews and content analysis of media coverage. Examines the relationship between politics, media, and the public, and discusses talk show demographics, the rise of right-wing populism, candidate appearances on MTV and radio, and image makers' takeover of Washington's policy-making machinery. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Mary Carroll
Media critics Diamond and Silverman--both affiliated with New York University's journalism department when they researched this study of the interaction of new technologies with politics from the 1992 presidential campaign to the 1994 congressional elections--raise vital questions about the impact of technology-driven "virtual democracy" on people, politics, and government in the United States. Techno-pols, including Clinton, Perot, and Gingrich, and pop pundits, like Larry King, Howard Stern, and Rush Limbaugh, come in for detailed scrutiny in this examination of an old theme: the need to distinguish between appearance and reality. Whether their subject is the 1992 campaign's "alternative media," the noisy pseudo-populism of talk radio and talk TV, politicians (and authors like David McCullough) "visiting" local media outlets through satellite linkups, or the new "national conversation" (or is it cacophony?) on computer chat lines, the authors insist that no matter how exciting the new hardware is, it has the potential to be more harmful than helpful to U.S. democracy unless its content--its "software" --is more substantive, factual, and even visionary than it has been to date.Book Details
Published
December 1, 1995
Publisher
Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press, c1995.
Pages
198
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780262041508