Book Description
Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it uncovers a host of spirit forms -- angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies -- that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing idea about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women -- scientists and philosophers -- who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in colour and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times.
Customer Reviews:
Not reliable.......2007-06-29
To be fair, I should state I haven't read this book, but checking it a little against my knowledge, I find it inaccurate. On p. 208 Warner says that George MacDonald wrote a "series" about a boy hero, Curdie. No: he wrote two books, and I wouldn't call two books a series. Warner says that one of the "most successful" Curdie stories is At the Back of the North Wind, but this is a book in which Curdie doesn't appear at all.Warner calls Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde "the most famous doppelganger story of all," but it is not a doppelganger story at all.
The Historical Mystery of the Soul.......2006-12-10
In a spoof of a college curriculum brochure, Woody Allen listed the following course description: "Metaphysics: What happens to the soul after death? How does it manage?" Nearly as funny, but unintentionally so, was the query on a questionnaire sent all over the British Empire by the Victorian anthropologist James Frazer, who was making an inquiry into "the Customs, Beliefs, and Languages of Savages". The question was, "Does [the soul] resemble a shadow, a reflection, a breath, or what?" Presumably the savages all had different ideas, but that doesn't mean that academics and divines all had a uniform and agreed-upon concept of what a soul is (or how it manages). How soul or spirit has been visualized or otherwise manifest in modern history is the theme of _Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century_ (Oxford University Press) by Marina Warner. As a professor of literature, Warner has written an academic work, large and weighty and ballasted with plenty of footnotes. It is wide-ranging and often scattershot, taking in vampires, zombies, magic lanterns, Rorschach inkblots, Peter Pan, psychic photography, time travel, automata, ether, purgatory, transubstantiation, and much more. Warner is astonishingly well-read and knowledgeable, and consistently if the erudition gets too thick for the reader in one chapter, there will be agreeable surprises in the next.
Souls are important things, even if many of us don't have the same beliefs in God or gods that we used to. Warner writes, "Even when we profess agnosticism if not unbelief in a supernatural order, we are the inheritors of much classical cosmology and medieval philosophy about spirit and soul - in unconscious ways and in common parlance." If the soul cannot be completely described, that doesn't bother the author; she has given a broad examination of western attempts to do so. The book takes a more-or-less chronological tour of soul-stuffs, starting, surprisingly enough, with wax, and the lack of souls in waxworks. Souls have also long been connected with breath or with air. Aristotle believed that the "spirit which is contained in the foamy body of the semen" was conveyed by the father. The air in the sky was sometimes thought to be full of souls, and everyone in a cold climate could see that exhaled breath was a little cloud. From souls as material objects we pass into souls as manifestations of light or shadow. We have delighted for a couple of centuries in devices that project forms of light and shadow for us. The original phantasmagoria meant "an assembly of phantoms" and was applied to magic lantern shows, such as those of the notorious Etienne Gaspard Robertson, who found that projecting pictures in a darkened crypt got the best effect if the pictures were scary, like a Medusa's head or the ghost of Banquo. He thus set us up "... for the coming of the horror video, its ghouls, ghosts, and vampire-infested suburbs." Snapping pix of souls was all in a day's work for the spiritualists, with the new art of photography growing along with the new "science" of the séance. The scientists and objective observers never did find a good explanation of how immaterial souls or spirits interact with the material world to let us hear, see, or photograph them.
Warner writes, "The brain balks at non-meaning; meaninglessness, like formlessness, becomes the dominant scandal against reason, and reason, seeking to abolish it, generates fantasies ..." Her book is full of strange wonders, like divine portents in the sky such as "rains of frogs or of fish (and sometimes saucepans)", or the persistent story of the Angels of Mons supporting the good guys in World War One (acclaimed as a true vision against the protests of the man who had written it as a fictional story). _Phantasmagoria_ is a report on centuries of figments of the imagination, and reflects the understanding that ghosts and demons were present in the olden days of any period in the past, and will be with us in newer forms revealed by newer technologies and story-telling powers.
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Technospaces: Inside the New Media (Critical Research in Material Culture)
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ASIN: 0826450032 |
Amazon.com
Mark B. N. Hansen's New Philosophy for New Media departs from much theorizing about the cognitive effects of new media to argue that the embodied experience--rather than a de-contextualized, disembodied flow of information--is the proper framework for understanding perception. His nuanced claims, infused with both cognitive theory and science, offer compelling insights into the human interaction with the digital image, but the book falls somewhat short of its title's dramatic promise.
Ultimately, Hansen's project it to update Henri Bergson's notion of the "affective body" for the 21st century. He claims that in the world of interactive new media "the 'image' has itself become a process, and, as such, has become irreducibly bound up with the activity of the body." The body acts as a filter to frame the digital image. In contrast, Hansen offers a sustained critique of Gilles Deleuze's "treatment of the movement image in which the cinematic image is purified of connection with the human body" (as described by Tim Lenoir). The book expands Hansen's vision across seven chapters that variously engage with new media art theory, virtual reality, the "digital facial image," and digital artwork. His most compelling illustration comes in the final chapter, where he demonstrates how artists Douglas Gordon and Bill Viola open "experience to the subperceptual inscription of temporal shifts (machine time)." Here, drawing on work of neuroscience, he shows that art actually engages the body and expands perception of the interstices between what human normally experience as "now."
While, like many contemporary works of theory, Hansen sometimes falls into opaque passages of academic, postmodern jargon, he tries to ground his theorizing in a concrete language that he lays out early on (with definitions of such terms as "embodiment" made explicit in relation the neuroscience). In the end, though, Hansen doesn't make entirely clear why this "new" philosophy of embodied experience is actually particular to new media. His supposition seems, rather, that new media art--interactive digital images--heighten the felt experience of perception, but this difference appears to be quantitative, rather than qualitative, relative to the experience of "old" media. In the end, then, Hansen provides a useful remedy to the abundance of "disembodied" theories of virtuality, but his book does not present a comprehensive "new philosophy" for those seeking guidance in a the new media era. --Patrick O'Kelley
Book Description
In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen defines the image in digital art in terms that go beyond the merely visual. Arguing that the "digital image" encompasses the entire process by which information is made perceivable, he places the body in a privileged position -- as the agent that filters information in order to create images. By doing so, he counters prevailing notions of technological transcendence and argues for the indispensability of the human in the digital era.
Hansen examines new media art and theory in light of Henri Bergson's argument that affection and memory render perception impure -- that we select only those images precisely relevant to our singular form of embodiment. Hansen updates this argument for the digital age, arguing that we filter the information we receive to create images rather than simply receiving images as preexisting technical forms. This framing function yields what Hansen calls the "digital image." He argues that this new "embodied" status of the frame corresponds directly to the digital revolution: a digitized image is not a fixed representation of reality, but is defined by its complete flexibility and accessibility. It is not just that the interactivity of new media turns viewers into users; the image itself has become the body's process of perceiving it.
To illustrate his account of how the body filters information in order to create images, Hansen focuses on new media artists who follow a "Bergsonist vocation"; through concrete engagement with the work of artists like Jeffrey Shaw, Douglas Gordon, and Bill Viola, Hansen explores the contemporary aesthetic investment in the affective, bodily basis of vision. The book includes over 70 illustrations (in both black and white and color) from the works of these and many other new media artists.
Customer Reviews:
very disappointing.......2006-07-27
I found this book to be very uninspiring and ultimately disappointing. The book should be called "New Philosophy" for "New Media" instead of New Philosophy for New Media. It is certainly not new philosophy and certainly doesn't cover all new media or media art.
First of all, mr. Hansen is very selective when it comes to new media art. The artists he discusses have given the body a central role, but one could name just as much artists for whom the body is not *that* central. But one could even contest the representation of this 'centralness': whereas one could discern some sort of negotiation between the body and the outside world (in this case technology) in the works of these artists, for Hansen this negotiation has always already been decided in favor of the human body.
So in the end it is not exactly 'new philosophy' we're dealing with, but, at least in this reader's view, desperate attempts to keep some old ways of thinking supreme, without ever trying to question them or trying out new ways of thinking. In a strange way one can sense this desperateness especially when it goes hand in hand with something that seems to be some sort of grudge against a new batch of thinkers who have attracted most of the attention, at least in some circles in the academic world (read: the world of cultural studies).
In these moments mr. Hansen's style leaves academic or creative thinking altogether and changes in a very childish name-calling and misrepresentation. For example, mr. Hansen seems to be very displeased by the fact that Friedrich Kittler has made such a name for himself as a media scientist. So whenever he refers to Kittler, he puts media scientist inbetween quotation marks, as on p. 71:
Without a doubt, it is German "media scientist" Friedrich Kittler... (p.71)
This is not the first time mr. Hansen refers to Friedrich Kittler in his book, so, one could ask him(/her)self, why here refer to the nationality of Kittler, should it suddenly matter that Kittler is not only a "media scientist" but also a German? And should the combination of being a German AND a "media scientist" (note the quotation marks) tell us enough, without even taking the substance of Kittler's work into account?
Even though this might seem to be something too little to fall over when judging a book, it becomes VERRY annoying when it keeps happening all through the work, especially when it threatens to take over the place of philosophical critique or thinking.
Of course, I didn't choose the passage above for no reason. It was exactly on that spot when I was totally repelled by Hansen's "work" (note that I am also using the quotation marks in a strategic way, just to mirror mr. Hansens's style). Let's see the rest of the sentence:
Without a doubt, it is German "media scientist" Friedrich Kittler who has most provocatively engaged the post-(anti-)humanist implications of digitization. (p.71)
This whole passage (and one could actually say: the whole book) serves no other end than to (mis-)represent post-humanist thinking as anti-humanism. Every priority given to technology becomes easily "technical determinism" (p.74) and Hansen knows how to connect some feelings of superiority to his own way of thinking: his quest is a quest of keeping the human in humanity alive, while all other thinkers reduce the human being in some way.
Well, let's read a short quote from one work from among the many books on post-humanism:
Humanism, in by now well-rehearsed arguments [!], produces oppressive institutions and discourses because it presumes that one sort of person (usually male, white, educated, and wealthy) is exemplary, and/or that there exists a "human nature" that is "the same" for all. (From the book: Avatar Bodies by Ann Weinstone, p. 3).
Apparently this is not so well-rehearsed for mr. Hansen: post-humanism has *nothing* whatsoever to do with anti-humanism, it is simply put a different way of thinking about what it is to be a human being. In general it tries to get rid of some rigid ways of thinking about the 'human', to create more space for other beings (be it people who do not fit the rigid image of humanism or be it some other being which is part of our world). One could say that in the end post-humanism is a much more 'humane' way of thinking than the obsolete and dogmatic ideas of european or western humanism. Whichever way you take it though, it is *NOT* anti-humanism.
As Deleuze argues in Difference and Repetition, real freedom is not about trying to find answers for old questions, but to be able to ask new questions, relevant and actual at the moment the questions are asked, in an always changing world. It is no wonder that affect and technology have become some of the central issues in todays thinking. But mr. Hansen misrepresents these issues in a very, well, creative way. But this creativity has nothing to do with asking new, relevant question, but a creativity in keeping creativity at bay!
So, the central argument of this book goes as follows: even though some things have changed (technology and with technology the nature of the work of art and the media in general), it was always already the human body which framed these changes. It is assumed, but mostly hidden in clever ways, that despite all these changes, the human body has stayed the same and will stay the same and will thus continue to determine (if we are carefull enough to see) how things will continue to change in the future.
Do we actually know this for a fact? It is exactly here that one could (and several have already tried to do so, even if Hansen puts their new ways of thinking inbetween quotation marks) that one could open up new spaces of thinking, ask new questions.
The central idea of affect is that we, human beings, are capable of changing the world, because we are capable to do things with our bodies, but also - and certainly not less! - that we are capable of being changed by the world. So, even if most art is created for or through human embodiment, the central question one should ask in relation to Hansens work is: is this still the same body as a century ago? As five centuries ago? How can we know? Well, we need to ask questions to find out, we cannot assume that the human body has not changed and has dictated all changes. This would be the least philosophical and least creative way one could take.
Claiming that technology, even if it is created by humanity, can change the human body in unforeseen ways is no technical determinism, on the contrary, it is claiming that we human beings are very human because we *are* affectable, through our bodies, in ways we are not even aware of. A very beautiful example is the chapter on Stelarc in Brian Massumi's work: Parables for the Virtual. Movement, Affect, Sensation, from 2002. (It is very surprising by the way that mr. Hansen doesn't mention Stelarc even once in this book, while it is a book on new media art).
One of Hansen's arguments at this point becomes how the human body itself creates some sort of rhythm or duration. This functions as an example of how the body creates the frame for our perception. This frame is so rooted in our bodies, that it becomes in Hansen's view a non-changeable, transcendental given. The philosophical journey Hansen undertakes always ends up with our bodies. Or, in other words, a journey to the self, the world outside has no place in this whole whatsover. Whereas other thinkers use this kind of bodily rhythm to argue that the body has always been open to and in sync with the outside world.
In the end, it was always an illusion (a sweet one of course) that the human body was outside and especially above the rest of nature, it is no smaller illusion that the body is outside or above technology. Because we created this technology does not mean that we totally control it's direction and/or nature. Most technology is invented by chance and through an ongoing negotiation with the outside world (material resources, natural 'laws' etc.) and not because we human beings directed it in some way. We could at least give ourselves the opportunity to ask questions about how techonology affects us, whether this is indeed framed by "the human body" (if there is such one unchanging universal substance) or not.
In fact one could put Hansen's scheme totally upside down: technology or art (in what media whatsoever) has never been framed by the human body, but by the world, the cosmos we live in. The human being or the human body has always been just a little dot framed and affected by cosmic forces in many ways through our embodiment. Let the fact that technology is created by humanity not fool anyone, we are still affected by cosmic forces, but this time through a combination of our emodiment and technology. It is the nature of this combination and how certain forces affect our being in new ways through this combination that we must study, this, in my view, can never be a journey to our own body, but to the great unknown outside.
New thinking..........2005-08-16
I must mention two points in relation to this work.
1. There is a true "newness" to new media espoused by Hansen in this work. This is based around the numeric, addressible quality of the digital image (Hansen reading Couchot) which renders it a process in exploded, bodily enacted frame rather than a traditional picture delimited by inherent form, so I must disagree with the editorial review.
2. I am unsure about Hansen's concept of the digital facial image as proposed in this work; I am not totally sure that this is quite the way forward - my thinking is not yet finalised on this.
Beyond these two comments, I must add that this work is a very weighty and useful addition to that philosophical project of revising and updating the continually pertinent Bergson, which I can recommend to all new media scholars.
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Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the British Press
Roger Fowler
Manufacturer: Routledge
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The Language of Newspapers (Intertext)
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Media Discourse
ASIN: 0415014190 |
Book Description
Newspaper coverage of world events is presented as the unbiased recording of `hard facts`. In a study of the British press, Roger Fowler challenges this perception, arguing that news is a practice, constructed by the social and political world.
Customer Reviews:
news are not the reality but only a window of the world.......1999-03-16
we can not know the reality if we don't see tv or read newspapers and so on. i think it is a very important question and tuchman defends that news are just stories about reality. in this sense journalism as a pratical activity transforms happenings in news in a very peculiar way wish may have danger effects in our understanding of the world.
Book Description
In Good News, Bad News, Jeremy Iggers argues that journalism's institutionalized conversation about ethics largely evades the most important issues regarding the public interest and the civic responsibilities of the press. Changes in the ownership and organization of the news media make these issues especially timely; although journalism's ethics rest on the idea of journalism as a profession, the rise of market-driven journalism has undermined journalists' professional status. Ultimately, argues Iggers, journalism is impossible without a public that cares about the common life. Written in an accessible style, Good News, Bad News is important reading for journalists, communication scholars, and students.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent take on an underdiscussed topic.......2000-05-20
Iggers begins his discussion about journalism ethics from a simple premise: "Journalism is in trouble." Citing a persistent urging of the public for journalists to become more ethical in their practices, Iggers explains that "the most fundamental problem is not the performance of the journalists but the standards themselves."
Iggers argues that the ethical discourse commonly inferred in the practice of journalism tends to ignore issues concerning the public interest and the social responsibility on which the press is founded. Environmental changes and the rise of market-driven journalism have caused a decline in the professional status of practicing journalists.
Ultimately, Iggers declares that the continued existance of journalism depends on a engaging the public in an open dialogue in which the public interest is central and practical goals are identified to help journalism "take as its foundation a commitment to enable citizens to participate in democratic life."
According to Iggers, part of the problem journalists have is an inability to discuss ethics in conceptual terms. Rather, most tend to discuss ethics in terms of cases, the most notable being the Janet Cooke case.
However, even in such cases, Iggers suggests that journalists do not often articulate the principles behind the cases, but tend to evaluate such examples on the merits of their effect in the relationship between the press and the public. Because of this, Iggers explains that the institutional values of journalism are not rooted in rules, but in evolving practices. And these practices appear to focus on making sure the journalist's ethical behavior cannot be questioned, invoking Gaye Tuchman's "defensive ritual."
After providing a historical context for the foundation of industry ethical codes, Iggers tracks ethical thought through the century in order to provide a context for the Janet Cooke incident. Iggers cites this controversy as a defining moment in journalism ethics which brought the discourse to national attention. Iggers then discusses the industry following the Cooke incident to provide a context for his discussion of the present issues.
Iggers cites several reasons for journalists' inability to conceptualize ethics. One major reason is that journalism encompasses several competing philosophies, which has led to "fundamental incoherencies and contradictions built into the core principles of the profession."
In addition, the practice of objectivity biased journalists against making moral judgements. According to Iggers, this philosophy carries over to ethical thought.
Also, changes in the concept of newsworthiness have resulted in a fundamental shift in focus from informing citizens to serving customers. "There is very little talk nowadays about readers as citizens," Iggers writes. "Rather, readers are spoken of as customers and the newspaper as a product. Increasingly, journalistic decisions are being made not on the basis of journalists' professional expertise about what it is important for the public to know, but on the basis of market research about what kinds of things customers, or potential customers, want to know."
Another problem in journalism ethical discourse is the scope of ethical codes in the workplace. Ethical codes are often aimed at individual reporters, not the institutions themselves. Also, Iggers points out that the owners of media are excluded from the discussion. Finally, many of the principles that are practiced tend to apply only to the story level, allowing inherent conflicts to arrive at the layout and publication level.
Iggers claims the solution for the survival of journalism is rooted in a pragmatic ethical base of theory. This approach would focus the creation and sustaining of a public sphere as the primary goal of journalism. In practice, Iggers advocates turning to a form of public journalism that centers around building an alliance between journalists and the public.
Iggers portrays the difference in philosophy as moving from a position of journalism without the public (the traditional model) to a practice of journalism about the public (a model addressing the concerns of the common reader) to a goal of journalism with the public (as a tool that enhances the abilities of citizens to function in society). According to Iggers, this process requires journalists approach the public as an ally, abandon professional arrogance and admit that "journalists need the public even more than the public needs them."
Iggers' portrayals of marketing influences and of the anti-democratic potential of journalistic objectivity are compelling. By building on traditional trends and discourse, he is able to show how the changing landscape of journalism practices demands critical attention.
However, Iggers acceptance of the consolidation of advertising and editorial content as a logical step in the service of the public should raise a few skeptical eyebrows. The open discussion and service he promotes with the public sphere appears to assume such a sphere would be media savvy enough to articulate what it expects from journalism. It also seems to suggest that the public sphere would desire journalism over entertainment, which is a difficult premise in light of his stated view that broadcast news has evolved into non-journalistic entertainment under public influence.
Good News, Bad News would make an interesting text for a journalism ethics course, if only for the background perspective and intelligent discussion of current issues.
Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bias exposes the culture of narrow-minded elitism in the media--and reveals what must be done to change it.In December of 2001, Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg charged the mainstream media with slanting the news and created a firestorm with his controversial bestseller Bias. Now Goldberg goes beyond identifying the media's partiality and explains how the slanting of the news is all but inevitable in the current climate--and why the media's stars continue to deny the industry's condition. In this fascinating report, Goldberg lays out his rallying cry, unafraid to name names, and prescribes the difficult remedies that must take place if genuinely balanced news is to survive.
Customer Reviews:
History will prove Bernard Goldberg to be a pioneer in media reform.......2007-02-04
So many positive and insightful comments have been written by previous readers, I will not try to add much to them. Obviously, I agree with most of them. "Arrogance" does an excellent job conveying the sneering, hypocritical attitudes that MSM holds toward general public opinion, and their deep denial about the situation. In fact, Amazon's "editorial" critique (which you can read above) is testimony to what Goldberg is reporting. In fascist and communist nations, one technique of controlling opinion is to figuratively (or literally) shoot the messenger of contradictory analysis, and you'll get a taste of that from Publisher's Weekly.
Goldberg's best chapters include the interview with Tim Russert, who discusses how network sensitivities control and protect themselves from internal criticism, and the chapter on double-standards and outright omissions used to report race-related news (see "Pass the Mashed Potatoes"). He also makes frequent points explaining how MSM use the fantastical argument about a right-wing bias, in order to cover their left-wng tracks.
I would have given Arrogance 5 stars except it petered out a bit toward the end, with sarcastic chapters on how the media can change itself - not very serious stuff. However, this book is written as much for the citizen like me, to put pressure on the media, as it is for journalists. They ignore this book at their peril!!
Better than Bias.......2007-01-12
Others here have described this book so well that it's pointless for me to reinvent the wheel, so I'll just say that as good as I thought Goldberg's book Bias was, Arrogance is even better. If you think that the bias in news programs or in the paper is limited to how they handle politicians, read this. It will open your eyes to the many ways the public is being "handled" by the media.
Enjoyable study of liberal bias in the media.......2006-05-20
Arrogance by Bernard Goldberg is a truly enjoyable read. Goldberg doesn't waste time trying to create a vast left wing conspiracy tied to Islam or Communism, he just presents the facts as he sees them. As a former insider, he's got the dirt on media bigwigs, and he's not afraid to dish. The liberal bias in the news is causing many people to flee the big three networks and turn on cable to find an escape. Goldberg offers up several examples of this bias and then goes further by coming up with several suggestions (some tongue in cheek) for correcting this slant. He also includes surprisingly frank interviews with Tim Russert and Bob Costas. Goldberg's other books Bias and 100 People Who are Screwing Up America are also excellent reads. He doesn't attack people on a personal level (although you can tell he has a bit of a grudge against Dan Rather) or use hyperbole or vitriol to get his point across. Some books written with a conservative slant make you want to throw up your hands and give up on this country, but Goldberg's books don't have that effect. You can tell he not only loves the country he lives in, but also the profession that he's chosen, and he has hope for the future.
Filled With Hate? Give Me a Break..........2006-04-21
This is a fair and balanced book calling for the open discussion of bias in the media. He's not pointing fingers, he's pushing for changes. For the left-wing media to consistently deny that liberal bias doesn't exist is to sign its own death warrant. Look at the consistent drop in viewership in the major network evening news programs as an example. I applaud Goldberg for his honest evaluation of the problem and his sincere interest in making it better.
How Does the Media Twist the News?.......2006-04-08
Bernard Goldberg is a former news correspondent for CBS and he has won many Emmy awards for his reporting. He has always been concerned about news bias and in 2003, he published a book titled "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News". This book became a best- seller and was the object of much controversy and scrutiny. "Arrogance" is basically a follow- up to that book with more quotations and more examples to back Goldberg's claims about the pompousness of the media elite and its refusal to change or even discuss the topic of bias.
Having read Goldberg's first book, "Bias", I was anxious to pick up this, his sequel, and see if he could enlighten me on more reasons to believe that the media is decidedly biased and give me more examples to prove his point. And with "Arrogance", I feel like Goldberg has once again driven the point home about the way a large majority of the people working in the media feel about political and social issues and how their own bias comes through in the way they report the news.
Goldberg attacks certain people and entities more than others in this book. He seems to have a major bone to pick with Dan Rather and he talks about his negative encounters with the head of the CBS evening news as well as his talk with Andy Rooney about an incident where Rooney got himself in trouble by suggesting that Rather was liberal during an interview on the Larry King Live show. Rooney got in trouble with the network for being "disloyal to a colleague". The exchange of words between Goldberg and Rooney is friendly, but to the point, with Rooney avoiding the issue about discussing media bias, apparently out of fear of it affecting his own career and future with the network.
Another thing that seems to bother Goldberg quite a bit is the New York Times and the media's general reliability on the Times as the definitive news source. Much of what he says here is true: the Times is often used as the infallible Bible of journalism. If it's printed in the New York Times, the general feeling by others in the media is that it must have some merit. There would have to be truth about the story at hand or, it is assumed, the Times would not print it. This thinking gives a newspaper like the Times tremendous political clout. What the Times says is often quoted so much that the public is bound to begin to believe much of it, even if it is known to be questionable. This wouldn't be a problem if the paper was neutral but, like Goldberg points out, its stories almost always take a leftward- leaning angle.
Goldberg offers up many good examples of bias in the media and the overall "liberal" slant that most media outlets seem to take. Granted, these are only a handful of examples are there are probably plenty of examples to the contrary. But there are some areas where Mr. Goldberg is accurate in his assertions. Take the gun issue, for example. The media, in general, wants everyone to believe that guns are bad in every single way. Their motives for feeling this way are well- intentioned: they want to minimize gun violence as much as possible and it is feared that if anything positive is said, it could lead to an increase in gun usage to commit crimes. Thus, there is little or no coverage ever given when guns are used to save lives. On the other hand, if guns are used to commit acts of violence, the media want to make sure everyone knows, and often they will drive the point home by talking about the guns and saying the word several times in one short report. But when guns are successfully used in self- defense, there is little or nothing stated about it. In fact, the media is careful to structure its words carefully so that the reported story, while twisted, is still close enough to accurate that no one can accuse them of outright lying.
Not everyone in the media is guilty of showing bias, and Goldberg gives credit where credit is due. Two people he singles out for their professionalism and their basically unbiased reporting are Tim Russert and Bob Costas. To back himself, Goldberg has question and answer interviews with the two men so that you, the reader, can hear exactly what was stated without editing or the chance anything was taken out of context. Both Russert and Costas agree that bias is present in the media and they both give some good examples of what they do when confronted by this problem.
Much of what Goldberg presents in this book is interesting to read about and I really enjoy his quotations taken directly from those in the media and from some of the big name actors/actresses in Hollywood. Many of these I have heard before but some of them are brand new. And they are very revealing in the way they take sides in favor of liberal causes or against conservative causes. Of course, some of them are taken from move actors and actresses and not from media people, so I can only assume that Goldberg added them for entertainment purposes.
As far as the charges levied against the media, the root cause of this is probably the place where journalism is taught: The nation's high schools and institutions of higher learning. If anything should be singled out, criticized, and targeted for change, this would seem like the place to start. And the book does, indeed, take a few stabs at the one- sidedness of journalism schools and toward the end of the book, it presents a so- called "12 Step Program", which has, among its dozen outlined agendas for change, a plea to change the way journalism is taught to students. Meant to parallel the same program that alcoholics use to recover from their drinking habit, this "12 Step Program" is the author's way to correct the problem with bias in the media. First and foremost, media people have to admit they have a problem in the first place- something many of them refuse to do. Then, the media needs to disassociate itself with New York City because there are too many liberals already living there. The remaining steps build upon being open and accepting of diverse viewpoints and one of the steps, #11, includes a list of conservative organizations complete with phone numbers, web sites, and other contact information so that people can get more diversified in the way they think.
If I had to point out some criticisms in this book, it would have to first be its own obvious bias (quite ironic, wouldn't you say?) and its failure to present both sides of the issue. Of course, Goldberg would quickly point out that there really isn't much to point out on the "other" side because the news media is already so one- sided that it's difficult to find those with differing opinions. The other thing I didn't like too much is that the book doesn't take a stronger stance on getting to the root of the problem and making changes there. If journalism schools are the main culprit, then someone needs to work toward either changing the curriculum at these schools; getting more conservative minded students to select journalism as a major; or opening up schools specifically for the purpose of teaching journalism in a more acceptable way. All of this whining about the bias in the media isn't going to change anything. Goldberg and others need to devise a workable plan of action and implement it as soon as possible.
Diversity is a good thing and it would be nice if there were more varied viewpoints on the nightly news, in America's newspapers, and other sources of news information. There have already been changes made in that direction (Fox News, Conservative radio talk shows, etc.) but Bernard Goldberg feels we have a long way to go until we achieve an unbiased media. Admitting there is a problem is the first step in the path toward recovery but as Goldberg points out, the media elite are arrogant, stubborn, and reluctant to admit any wrongdoing.
It will take some time before Goldberg's vision of an unbiased media ever becomes reality. Reading "Arrogance" is one step in the right direction toward understanding what the bias issue is all about and how it affects what we see each night on the evening news and what we read in our daily papers. It's a very good book by a man who has worked in the business for a long time and it has some interesting stories to tell about these people who control America's media outlets.
Book Description
This book introduces the critical concepts and debates that are shaping the emerging field of game studies. Exploring games in the context of cultural studies and media studies, it analyses computer games as the most popular contemporary form of new media production and consumption.
The book:
- Argues for the centrality of play in redefining reading, consuming and creating culture
- Offers detailed research into the political economy of games to generate a model of new media production
- Examines the dynamics of power in relation to both the production and consumption of computer games
This is key reading for students, academics and industry practitioners in the fields of cultural studies, new media, media studies and game studies, as well as human-computer interaction and cyberculture.
Customer Reviews:
Game Cultures .......2007-03-14
I have just finished reading Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy, Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. I really enjoyed Game Cultures, and it was especially interesting because the first half of it was read in parallel with Marie Laure Ryan's Narrative as Virtual Reality from 2001. Dovey and Kennedy share Ryan's focus on embodiment in game texts but they take it further as a subject in itself, rather than as a part of Ryan's structural approach to Narrative. The triumph of Game Cultures is the critical term `technicity' as adapted from Tomas (2000). Technicity permits analysis of dialogue between players and games and between the various discourses taken up within games; as text (and according to Dovey and Kennedy there is room for games as text and they take a hybrid approach to game analysis), as play and as cultural system/s. I see the hybrid approach of Game Cultures as a positive development in game research, it embraces rather than demarcates territory that is uncertain and dynamic and this is very appropriate considering the fluid nature of games.
Some faults I can see with Game Cultures? I don't mean to whinge...but I will. The biggest thing that got to me was, why aren't there any notes to the text? Second, the most detailed analysis of a text using the tools described in Game Cultures comes in the form of a sociology style study of a game development company. It is interesting to get this perspective, especially with a gender critique approach, but I would have liked to have seen more reception and interpretation or community response studies in the text. Maybe such work will develop out of the masses who should (and probably are already) reading Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media
Book Description
Extending the visionary early work of the late Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village, one of his last collaborative efforts, applies that vision to today's worldwide, integrated electronic network. When McLuhan's groundbreaking Understanding Media was published in 1964, the media as we know it today did not exist. But McLuhan's argument, that the technological extensions of human consciousness were racing ahead of our ability to understand their consequences, has never been more compelling. And if the medium is the message, as McLuhan maintained, then the message is becoming almost impossible to decipher. In The Global Village, McLuhan and co-author Bruce R. Powers propose a detailed conceptual framework in terms of which the technological advances of the past two decades may be understood. At the heart of their theory is the argument that today's users of technology are caught between two very different ways of perceiving the world. On the one hand there is what they refer to as Visual Space--the linear, quantitative mode of perception that is characteristic of the Western world; on the other hand there is Acoustic Space--the holistic, qualitative reasoning of the East. The medium of print, the authors argue, fosters and preserves the perception of Visual Space; but, like television, the technologies of the data base, the communications satellite, and the global media network are pushing their users towards the more dynamic, "many-centered" orientation of Acoustic Space. The authors warn, however, that this movement towards Acoustic Space may not go smoothly. Indeed, McLuhan and Powers argue that with the advent of the global village--the result of worldwide communications--these two worldviews "are slamming into each other at the speed of light," asserting that "the key to peace is to understand both these systems simultaneously." Employing McLuhan's concept of the Tetrad--a device for predicting the changes wrought by new technologies--the authors analyze this collision of viewpoints. Taking no sides, they seek to do today what McLuhan did so successfully twenty-five years ago--to look around the corner of the coming world, and to help us all be prepared for what we will find there.
Customer Reviews:
A Laudable Extension of McLuhan: Cool, Seminal & Involving!.......2000-12-09
Powers says that this book is not about "final answers." By God he's right! And he proceeds to effloresce a wondrous garden wrought of the print medium brimming over with fresh probes, "osmic space," brains "astonied," the secret lives of "sense ratios," and other electrific, outsized insights and invitations into the futurepresent. One could readily argue and effectively so that "The Global Village..." is indeed a worthy extension of the medium of Professor McLuhan himself, ringing true and resonating orchestrally with the spirit and vivacity of that bright, iridescent, warm and radiant bulb which, tragically, went out suddenly and left us in darkness on New Year's Eve, 1980.
Feed forward 9 years. Powers'/McLuhan's "tetrad" is a mesmerizingly rich metaphor lending clarity and intensity to McLuhan's seminal 1964 probicon, "Understanding Media--The Extensions of Man." This "new" 1989 book is a MUST-read, a reverent continuance of McLuhan's oeuvre, a virtual channeling of his spirit, and in various ways easier to grasp perhaps, more accessible even, than the monumentally revolutionary/visionary UMTEOM.
The beauty of McLuhan and by protraction Dr. Bruce Powers here is that these men are not pedants but facilitators. Their goal, much like that of Carl Rogers or George B. Leonard or Joseph Campbell, is not to pound stuff into brainpans, but to gently yet insistently open up minds to possibilities, perils, challenges, potentialities and joys imperative in the present reality/"reelity?" or whatever one wishes to term the agardish within which each of us swims, breathes, eats, creates, dances, defecates, procreates and seethes.
If McLuhan is the sorcerer, Bruce Powers is his worthy apprentice, now successor. In fact he veritably invites all of us to be successors (McLuhanatics?), to become involved (the essential definition of "cool"). This book is exciting, invigorating, pulsating, intensely involving and above all, highly rewarding. We need more extensions of McLuhan like this one. This is a superb nonbook, a hybrid medium, and a seamless read. TGV will get your probing juices flowing. It's as revitalizing as pure MDMA (as far as "the mdma is the message" goes). Buy this deceptively modest paperback, and step into it like a hot bath.
a shameful posthumous misrepresentation of McL.'s thought........2000-06-09
I'm surprised this travesty is still in print. "Not in McLuhan's style" is a kind understatement; Powers demonstrates flagrant misunderstanding and confusion of basic McLuhanesque ideas. Try 'Laws of Media' or 'Understanding Electric Language' instead.
FIGURING OUT THE GROUND.......1998-09-14
This book is for the McLuhan enthusiast who would like to figure out the ground on which McLuhan stands. It is chock full of McLuhan's ideas, but not presented in McLuhan's typical style. Published 9 years after McLuhan's death, it seems likely that co-author Bruce Powers assembled the material for publication.
If you are not already very familiar with McLuhan's thoughts and earlier writings, this book is not for you. If you are already very familiar with McLuhan's words, you won't find anything new, but you will find some of McLuhan's basic ideas amplified and extrapolated.
Essentially an essential book for the McLuhanite.
Average customer rating:
- A treatise on rhythm as the essence of human personality
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Rhythm and Self-Consciousness: New Ideals for an Electronic Civilization
William McGaughey
Manufacturer: Thistlerose Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Theory
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| Music
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Media Studies
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ASIN: 0960563040 |
Book Description
In ancient Greece there was a philosophical revolution which was concerned with the nature of generality. The ideals inherited from that time have been at the core of western civilization. But now, without much comment or notice, a new set of ideals have appeared centered, not in eternal forms, but the habit structure and mentality of individual persons. Its guiding principle is something which we can call “rhythm”. It is an ideal of peak performance in superb athletes, musicians, and raconteurs. Until now, this ideal has lacked the type of explanation which Plato and Aristotle gave to concepts such as justice, beauty, and the good. The book, Rhythm and Self-Consciousness, contains a philosophy of rhythm, rhythm being a positive end of personal exertion. The negativity appears in the guise of self-consciousness, seen as a distraction from rhythm. (For the performance of rhythm requires intense concentration.) Self-consciousness is actually a double consciousness - a focus not only upon a concrete object of thought but also upon thought itself as an object. Rhythm becomes impossible under those conditions. Therefore, its cultivation involves the suppression of self-consciousness as well as the grooving of proper habits and skills and general physical conditioning. So we see that cultural ideals are not eternal but vary according to conditions of time and place. Foremost among those conditions would be a society's dominant cultural technology. A previous book by William McGaughey, Five Epochs of Civilization (Thistlerose, 2000), presented the thesis that world history can be divided into five epochs or eras correlating with changes in communication technology. The ideals of classical Greece are appropriate to a society which has recently acquired literacy. The ideal of rhythm is appropriate to a society dominated by mass communication in the form of motion pictures, sound recordings, radio and television broadcasting.
Customer Reviews:
A treatise on rhythm as the essence of human personality.......2001-12-16
William McGaughey's Rhythm And Self-consciousness: New Ideals For An Electronic Civilization is a treatise on rhythm as the essence of human personality and talent in any performance, whether in music, athletics, or conversational wit. Divided into three main sections on Form, Rhythm, and Self-Consciousness, this book takes a hard, analytical look at each facet and how all three relate to the human psyche. Highly intriguing, especially for musicians, athletes, and philosophers alike - it would seem these three groups have far more in common than one would guess. Also recommended is the previous book in this series, Five Epochs of Civilization. Rhythm And Self-Consciousness is strongly recommended reading for students of philosophy and the impact that moving from print to an electronic culture has had on contemporary notions of "civilization".
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