Book Review: After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Media Environment

Abstract

Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Media Environment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 361 pp.Walter Lippmann's theory of democracy called on professional elites, including journalists, to shape and furnish the citizenry with information because of the public's limited interest and intelligence (p. 46) to fully make sense of the political world. In contrast, Williams and Delli Carpini argue that given the current new environment and reconfigurations of the mediated public sphere, it is impossible for journalists to continue to exercise monopoly over politically relevant information. Williams is a professor of studies at the University of Virginia, and Delli Carpini is a professor of communication and the Walter H. Annenberg Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. These authors call for a popular democracy in which professional journalists and citizens have the same responsibilities in the sphere.While a few decades ago, newspapers, radio, and television were the veritable sources of public information and avenues for popular expression, the reality today is that younger people are relying on unorthodox sources of political information such as prime-time television dramas, late night shows, and comedies-often seen by elites in the old model of political communication as blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and online news sources. This book examines what Williams and Delli Carpini refer to asthe precipitous decline in the power of journalists to control, for better or worse, the narrative and an increase, again for better or worse, in the importance of other forms of communication, some new, and some old, to influence and/or dictate coverage of politics. (p. 6)A major strength of After Broadcast News lies in the authors' ability to powerfully and seamlessly blend a theoretical and historical approach in a very practical way. Williams and Delli Carpini take us back into history and walk us through the different milestones in and democracy in the American society. The book shows how different media regimes are associated with somewhat different notions of free press, democratic engagement, civic engagement, responsibility participation, and free speech, among others (pp. 16-50). The authors not only offer useful insights into historical junctures in history in the United States but also begin, or at least take up, the debate about the role of professional journalists, citizen journalists, and cultural producers such as filmmakers in the shaping of public discourse in a democratic society.This book problematizes the arbitrariness of the news-entertainment dichotomy and hegemonic notions of politically relevant information. A key question raised in this book was, Can journalism/journalists continue to claim to be the purveyor of public opinion in a world where comedians, satirists, ordinary citizens, and actors have become very important conduits of politically relevant and democratically useful information? …