What People Know: Freedom and the Press
The power and status of the press in America reached new heights after spectacular reporting triumphs in the segregated South, in Vietnam, and in Washington during the Watergate years. Then new technologies created instantaneous global reporting, which left the government unable to control the flow of information to the nation. The press thus became a formidable rival in critical struggles to control what the people know and when they know it. But that was more power than the press could handle-and journalism crashed toward new lows in public esteem and public purpose. The dazzling new technologies, profit-driven owners, and celebrated editors, reporters, and broaqdcasters made it possible to bypass older values and standards of journalism.
Richard Reeves was there at the rise and at the fall, beginning as a small-town editor, becoming the chief political correspondent for the New York Times and then a best-selling author and award-winning documentary filmmaker. He tells the story of a tribe that lost its way. From the Pony Express to the Internet, he chronicles what happened to the press as America accelerated into uncertainty, and he argues that to survive, the press must go back to doing what it was hired to do long ago: stand as an outsider watching government and politics on behalf of a free people busy with its own affairs.
Reviews
"To its credit, What the People Know avoids the perils of droning pedantry. It is fast-moving and full of history and anecdotes. . . . Reeves wisely spends much of his energy focusing on the kind of corporate corruption of journalism that has not really permeated the consciousness of an American public willing to believe every conspiracy theory about the media except the most dangerous one." Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe
"[Richard Reeves] deeply regrest what has happened to the American press in his lifetime. Newspapers have been the playthings of rich owners for decades; but now, much worse, they are small and expendable parts of huge entertainment empires. . .Can [the press] scramble back again? Only, Mr. Reeves, believes, if journalists recover their old role of being onlookers and outsiders, rather than imagining themselves as central players in the body politic. . .They do not need to wear those fedoras. But they do need to watch, and write." The Economist (UK)
"Richard Reeves is a respected veteran journalist who wants fellow journalists to concentrate on ferreting out the truth without fear or favor. That sounds like a mundane topic for a book. After all, what else would journalists be expected to do? But Reeves's What the People Know is anything but mundane because so many journalists either have no idea how to ferret out the truth, or seem to have forgotten that part of their job . . . [This book]-part personal reminiscence, part media critique . . . [is] worthwhile [reading] for anybody who cares about Reeves's illustrious career or the state of journalism." Steve Weinberg, Christian Science Monitor
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