NEWSLETTER
Robert W. McChesney, an influential leftist critic who argued that corporate property was bad for American journalism and that Silicon Valley billionaires who dominated online information were a threat to democracy, died on March 25 at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. He was 72 years old.
The cause was glioblastoma, aggressive brain cancer, said his wife, Iger Stole.
Professor McSney was based on the Academy: he had a PH.D. In communications and taught in universities, and in paper ink journalism: it was the founding editor of The Rocket, a Seattle music magazine that reviewed Nirvana's first single.
His main thesis, expressed in more than a dozen books and dozens of articles and interviews, was that the corporate property media complied too much with the political powers and that restricted the opinions to which the Americans were exposed. In addition, he argued that the Internet promise, from an opinions market of Wild West West, had been strangled by some giant owners of online platforms.
An early book, “Rich Media, poor democracy” (1999) warned that consolidation in journalism would undermine democratic norms. Perhaps in his best known work, “Digital Disconnect: how capitalism is turning the Internet against democracy” (2013), rejected the utopian opinion that the digital revolution would mark the beginning of an open border of sources of information and vigor of democracy.
Instead, he showed how the Internet was devastating the business model for newspapers, while supplanted civic mentality coverage of the local government with the low -denominator's lint: celebrity gossip, videos of cats and personal naval looks.
Professor McSney blamed capitalism.
“The reason for profits, commercialism, public relations, marketing and advertising, all the defining characteristics of contemporary corporate capitalism, are fundamental for any evaluation of how Internet has developed and it is likely to develop,” he wrote.
A socialist without complexes, Professor MCCHESNEY argued that the government should give all Americans coupons $ 200 to donate the non -profit media of their choice.
He campaigned for the presidential careers of Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders returned the favor by writing a striker to Professor McChesney's book “Dollaocracy: how the money complex and media elections is destroying America” (2013), written with John Nichols.
In a interview With Truthout, a non -profit news site focused on social justice, Professor McChesney attacked the coverage of the main media to Mr. Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries that he lost to Hillary Clinton. CNN and MSNBC, he said, were deeply biased in favor of the “centrist” candidates representing the status quo.
“One can imagine how Sanders would have done it if he had MSNBC coverage similar to what Obama received in 2007-08,” said Professor McChesney.
The conservative writer David Horowitz put Professor McChesney on a list of the “101 most dangerous academics in the United States” in 2006, including he among the “regular radicals” who indoctrinated American students.
On the other hand, in 2008 Utne Reader appointed Professor McCHesney as one of the “50 visionaries who are changing his world.”
Professor McSney warned in 2016 that when corporate giants dominate online information, at that time, those giants were facebook and Google, they have too much power about what people know about the world.
“This is really antithetical to anything remotely close to a free press and a free society.” saying In an interview with the leftist media “Democracy now!”
The way of dealing with such monopolies was nationalizing them, he said. He suggested an acquisition of the government that would make Internet giants a quasi -public service, such as the Post Office.
Professor McSney was also one of the founders, in 2003, of a public interest group, Free Press, who opposed corporate consolidation in the news business and directed a national campaign for the neutrality of the network, requested the same Internet access for all content producers, from giants such as Netflix to individual bloggers.
Robert Waterman McChesney was born on December 22, 1952 in Cleveland, one of Samuel P. McChesney Jr., an advertising executive this week, a syndicated magazine inserted in Sunday newspapers, and Edna (McCorkle) McChesney.
He grew up in the suburb of Cleveland of Shaker Heights and attended Pomfret, a Connecticut preparation school. In 1977, he graduated with a degree from Evergreen State College, in Washington, where he studied politics and economy.
In 1979, after working as Sports Stringer for UPI and editor at the Seattle Sun, a weekly alternative, it became the editor of the rocket, which drew the appearance of the Seattle Grunge-Rock scene in the eighties and 90s.
Intellectually restless, he enrolled in the postgraduate school at the University of Washington, obtaining a Ph.D. In communications in 1989. For a decade, he taught in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He and his wife, Dr. Stole, who also had a PH.D. In communications, he moved to the University of Illinois Urbano-Champaign, where he was the professor of Gutgsell in the communications department.
Professor McSney's books also include “The last reporter, please, will the lights come out?” (2011), with Victor Pickard and “corporate media and the threat to democracy” (1997).
In addition to his wife, his daughters survive, Amy and Lucy McCHESNEY; and a brother, Samuel P. McChesney III.
In a late book, “People prepare: the fight against an unemployed economy and a democracy without citizens” (2016), written with Mr. Nichols, Professor McCHESNEY argued that artificial intelligence and digital revolution would eliminate numerous categories of jobs.
“Capitalism, as we know, is very bad for the technological revolution that we are beginning to experiment,” he said in an interview about the book.
“Our argument is that we currently have a democracy without citizens,” he continued. “With that we refer to a government system where all the important decisions of the government are made to adapt to the interests and values of the richest and most powerful Americans, and the corporations they possess.”
(Tagstotranslate) McChesney
