In Rich Media, Poor Democracy, Robert W. McChesney argues that the media, including the Internet, serve the interests of corporate profit rather than the public interest. The result of the concentrated corporate power that McChesney details is the weakening of democracy. The book is subtitled ôCommunication Politics in Dubious Times,ö but it could just as well have been subtitled, ôThe Media Versus Democracy.ö Published in 1999, in the 2000 edition McChesney states that his book ôis about the democratic crisis in the United States and the rest of the worldö (ix). He contends that ôU.S. democracy is in a decrepit stateö (281), and cites the purpose of his book ôis to analyze the existing situation by drawing upon history and pointing toward democratic change in the futureö (3).
The book deals with five major areas including media ownership/mergers, faults in the practice of journalism, the Internet, policy-making and media reform. McChesney divides his book into two major sections. Part I is Politics, and Part II is History; one of the strengths of the book is the combination of the historical with current events. In addition it is very well documented with extensive notes for each chapter. Another of the bookÆs strengths is the large amount of historical and factual information and examples. One of the weaknesses is McChesneyÆs solutions for media reform, or what can be done to return the media to the public. The weakness of this argument is that it is oversimplified. For example he equates democracy with the left (283), implying that other perspectives cannot be democratic. His solutions seem more based in liberal doctrine and hope than in the realities of contemporary corporate America, and a government that utilizes the media for its own political aims. His main suggestion is that there is a ôneed to organize politically to enact structural media reformö and this requires ôthe emergence of a broad-based democrati...