An invigorating polemic against tactics the news media use to manipulate and divide their audiences.
Rolling Stone contributing editor Taibbi (I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, 2017, etc.) spares neither right- nor left-leaning pundits as he inveighs against cable TV and other media that treat news as a form of entertainment.
After nearly three decades as a journalist, the author reconsiders the message of one of his earliest professional touchstones, Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, in which Chomsky argued that censorship in the United States wasn’t overt but covert—that news companies simply failed to promote people who opposed their aims. Taibbi saw the self-censorship in newscasts that courted the widest possible audiences with a bland approach he sums up as, “Good evening, I’m Dan Rather, and my frontal lobes have been removed. Today in Libya.…” The explosion of cable news channels helped to change that, but the author argues convincingly that many outlets have traded one sin for another. Media companies now shunt viewers into “demographic silos” and treat news like pro wrestling, fomenting conflict by encouraging people to take sides. Prime examples include the Sean Hannity Show on Fox News and the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. “Maddow defenders will say she’s nowhere near as vicious and deceptive as Hannity and therefore doesn’t belong in the same category,” writes Taibbi. “But she builds her audience the same way,” by fostering an us vs. them mentality. This binary approach narrows debate, discourages the pursuit of complex stories, and leads journalists into blunders such as believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or implying that the Mueller Report might topple the president by the next commercial break. First published in online installments, this book—which ends with a spirited interview with Chomsky—is less polished than recent works by Taibbi that arrived by a more traditional path. But his mordant wit is intact, and his message to journalists is apt and timely: Not everyone has to win a Pulitzer or Edward R. Murrow Award, but, please, have some pride.
An invigorating polemic against tactics the news media use to manipulate and divide their audiences.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949017-25-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
It must be hard being right all the time, but controversial rapper and black activist Sister Souljah doesn't mind, judging from her remarkably smug, occasionally uplifting memoir. Let there be no doubt, this ``young sultry, big, brown-eyed, voluptuous, wholesome, intelligent, spiritual, ghetto girl'' has opinions. She is for belief in God, hard work, self-respect, community service, political activism, a strong family structure, and black women sharing their men in the face of a huge supply-side shortage. She is against abortion, narcotics, the welfare system, interracial dating, and homosexuality. Passionate in all things, Souljah's juxtaposition of her activism and her active hormones can produce odd results. When a man she wants turns up at a committee meeting, she recounts: ``I...set to work on how to organize Black students across the country into an African student network. With moist panties and a body that wanted to be touched...I argued that most African students were confronted by the same problems.'' Souljah's political beliefs frequently become little more than sidelines to her accounts of failed romances—indignant stories of a strong, single, sexy black heroine and the brothers who let her down. The men who fail come in all varieties (from her father to her mother's lovers and her own), but Souljah concludes that their shortcomings are the result of centuries of white racist oppression—psychological, political, cultural. Ultimately, the book reveals the psyche of a young black woman who feels she has been betrayed by too many and who trusts no one. Everyone disappoints her. After eight chapters (each named for the guilty individual in question: ``Mother,'' ``Nathan,'' ``Mona,'' etc.), a predictable pattern emerges in which Souljah's initial optimism wears off and gives way first to rationalization, then to harsh condemnation. Part fiery political diatribe, part searing sexual history, part unintentional psychological profile, Souljah throws more heat than light.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2483-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.
A young black man’s self-destructive arc, cut short by a passion for writing.
Asante’s (It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop, 2008, etc.) memoir, based on his teenage years in inner-city Philadelphia, undoubtedly reflects the experiences of many African-American youngsters today in such cities. By age 14, the author was an inquisitive, insecure teen facing the hazards that led his beleaguered mother, a teacher, to warn him, “[t]hey are out there looking for young black boys to put in the system.” This was first driven home to Asante when his brother received a long prison sentence for statutory rape; later, his father, a proud, unyielding scholar of Afrocentrism, abruptly left under financial strain, and his mother was hospitalized after increasing emotional instability. Despite their strong influences, Asante seemed headed for jail or death on the streets. This is not unexplored territory, but the book’s strength lies in Asante’s vibrant, specific observations and, at times, the percussive prose that captures them. The author’s fluid, filmic images of black urban life feel unique and disturbing: “Fiends, as thin as crack pipes, dance—the dancing dead….Everybody’s eyes curry yellow or smog gray, dead as sunken ships.” Unfortunately, this is balanced by a familiar stance of adolescent hip-hop braggadocio (with some of that genre’s misogyny) and by narrative melodrama of gangs and drug dealing that is neatly resolved in the final chapters, when an alternative school experience finally broke through Asante’s ennui and the murderous dealers to whom he owed thousands were conveniently arrested. The author constantly breaks up the storytelling with unnecessary spacing, lyrics from (mostly) 1990s rap, excerpts from his mother’s journal, letters from his imprisoned brother, and quotations from the scholars he encountered on his intellectual walkabout in his late adolescence. Still, young readers may benefit from Asante’s message: that an embrace of books and culture can help one slough off the genuinely dangerous pathologies of urban life.
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9341-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
