Overview

News for All the People is a sweeping account of the class and racial conflicts in American news media, from the first colonial newspaper to the internet age. It chronicles key government decisions that created our nation's system of news, major political battles over the role of the press, and the rise of media conglomerates and epoch-defining technologies. The book reveals how racial segregation in the media distorted the news and unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence through their coverage. And it illuminates how Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative and democratic press and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies. The writing is fast-paced, story-driven and replete with portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, the heroes and the villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate battles and government policies that built our segregated media system- as when Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover gave a radio license to a notorious KKK organization in the nation's capital-and those who rebelled against that system, such as Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos 'n' Andy off the air. News for All the People will become the new standard history of American media.

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9781844676873

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News for All the People is truly a masterpiece; I could not put it down. After years of research, Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres have produced a book that will be nothing short of mandatory reading for all who care about the media or democracy. It will change how you think about media and American history. - Robert W. McChesney, coauthor of The Death and Life of American Journalism Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres have rendered a splendid public service with this highly readable and engrossing story of how the press sees - and doesn't see - who we are as a people. Race and ethnicity, power and privilege, the visible and the invisible are at the core of our democratic crisis today, and it's hard to imagine a better way to face the challenge than to be armed with the story this book tells so well. - Bill Moyers, Public Affairs Television

Praise for Harvest of Empire A serious, significant contribution.A New York Times Book Review Praise for Roll Down Your Window The best of American journalism.A Financial Times This book deserves un abrazo grande.A Pete Hamill

Author Information

Juan Gonzalez is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for commentary and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is the co-host of the nationally syndicated TV and radio show Democracy Now! and is a staff columnist for New York's Daily News. His previous books include Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America; Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse; and Roll Down Your Window: Stories from a Forgotten America. Joseph Torres is the senior advisor for government and external affairs for Free Press, the national media reform organization. Before joining Free Press, he worked as deputy director at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was a journalist for several years. He lives in Silver Spring, MD.

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