The blame for this situation he places on profit-hungry owners of the media. "The simple fact," he says, "is that much of the news content read in newspapers, heard on radio or delivered on television is controlled by men and women with limited perspectives of what is or is not 'news,' who for the most part have received no broad-gauged training, and who, when challenged, react with a defensiveness that astounds and infuriates outsiders." He sees deficiencies in the hiring and training of key personnel - the "gatekeepers" who determine your daily news diet - as the major cause of mediocre press performance. He has been chairman of the now defunct National News Council and an occasional teacher. Isaacs never graduated from high school, but he was managing editor of the Indianapolis Times before he was 30, and he went on to be editor of four other papers and president- publisher of another. Yet as they examine it their paths cross, and in the end they settle on the same villains - media owners, money hungry to Isaacs and power protective to Parenti. To Isaacs it is a fine institution that has gone astray o Parenti it is a compliant tool of the power elite. They have drastically different views of the press. The other, Michael Parenti, is an academic with a leftward tilt. One, Norman Isaacs, is a distinguished journalist of the old school, almost in the guru class. Here we have two attempts at an answer from two very different - diametrically opposite, in fact - sources.
Okay? Now a question: Where does the trouble lie? LET'S START with a statement on which we all can agree: The American press, print and broadcast, is not doing as good a job as it should be doing. $20 INVENTING REALITY The Politics of the Mass Media.
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