Republic of Denial: Press, Politics, and Public Life

These are bad times for both the American press and American politics, observes Janeway in his broad overview of the linked machinery of politics and journalism. Hemorrhaging its own credibility, today's media establishment seems more embattled than ever. The same could be said of American politics: a disaffected public has traded confidence in democracy for jaded cynicism. Those two conditions add up to a recipe for disaster, writes Janeway, a former editor-in-chief at the Boston Globe who now directs the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. He argues that a confluence of forces in both the news business and politics has plunged America into a dark night of the soul, from which we are unlikely to awaken anytime soon. Sketching the jarring trajectory of our nation after such events as the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy's assassination and, of course, Vietnam, Janeway plugs in other variables such as the consolidation of print and broadcast media and the insatiable appetite of 24-hour cable news. The upshot is that the quality most needed by journalists now--a critical skepticism toward government--is being replaced by market research at newspapers driven more by the bottom line than a sense of civic duty. While Janeway's thesis is not strikingly original, those interested in how headlines are made will appreciate his analysis of the crumbling barrier between the newsroom and the boardroom--and the dismaying notion that serious journalism has itself become just one more niche market. (Oct.)