Pierre Bourdieu is a professor of sociology at the College de France and the director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in Paris. At the heart of his analysis of print media, television and the Internet is the opposition he draws between a "cultural" pole and a "market" pole, an opposition which is seen to organize the entire field of journalism. The pole exerting the greatest magnetic pull is not difficult to see or feel. The ubiquitousness of the censorship that results due to the constraints imposed by marketing content to the largest audience, however, is often mistaken for a natural order, i.e., "the way things are," and tends to negate the importance of critical argument and serious journalism. Such is the state of journalism today: the grammar and literacy of logical and ethical thought and practice are damned.

Arthur E. Rowse is a veteran newsman and media critic who is retired from U.S. News & World Report, as well as the city desks of The Boston Globe, Boston Herald/Traveler and The Washington Post. The National Press Club conducts an annual competition in his name for excellence in media criticism. In "Drive-By Journalism — The Assault on Your Need to Know," Rowse critiques the declining degree of public representation in our political legislatures and daily newspapers and network news programs. The result of this decline, he argues, is the weakening and possible dismantling of the future of democracy in the United States (and by extension, of U.S. global media-conglomerate power nearly everywhere else). Rowse points out the links between the decline in responsiveness of elected officials to their constituents and the success, beginning in the 1970s, with which "conservative forces have managed to narrow the scope of political debate by dominating the field of commentators." Like Bourdieu, Rowse names names — individuals, conservative foundations, publications, think tanks and other organizations that provide well-sourced examples and endnotes to support his analysis.

Rowse does not end his story with only bad news, however. In "What Better Reporting Can Do," one of the sections from "Drive-By Journalism" excerpted for MediaChannel, he cites an experiment conducted by James S. Fishkin, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, in "deliberative polling." The premise of Fishkin's study was straightforward, i.e., the more complete reporting and balanced commentary a citizen had access to, the better informed his or her decisions were likely to be, and therefore, the more empowered subjects were likely to feel to exercise their rights and responsibilities in public affairs. The political impact of his polling experiment, however, was startling. The more people "learned about political issues, the more they tended to switch from conservative to liberal positions." Conservative critics of Fishkin's experiment were not pleased.

Bruce Sanford, a partner with the law firm Baker & Hostetler, is one of the most accomplished press lawyers in the United States. In his book, "Don't Shoot The Messenger," the author maps out the consequences of the disintegration of trust between the public and the news media. According to Sanford, the degree of distrust that began to be uncovered in the mid-eighties by, for example, the 1986 Times Mirror survey, represented "the media's worst fear: no one will pay attention." The credibility of the press had eroded to the extent that it was losing its symbolic force and cachet; it was acting primarily under pressure to make concessions to the market. Its new principle of legitimacy was based on ratings and visibility. The body of Sanford's text details the history and some of the key players involved in the disintegration. However, like Pierre Bourdieu and Arthur Rowse, Sanford sees something better on the horizon. By the "recapturing" of the profession of news journalism, Sanford reports, we may be able to circumvent its death. Lead by foundation executives and the leaders in journalism who champion the simple theme that "journalism is the product offered by media companies, and unless it is practiced and produced at its best, the franchise will fail," even Wall Street has begun to recognize the new movement underway. Content is king, after all. Please turn the pages of these three books (click on each book cover above for an excerpt) and share your thoughts in the MediaChannel forum. — Andrew Levy, Editor and MediaChannel Affiliate Manager THESE BOOKS ARE FOR SALE IN THE BOOK CORNER