On today’s episode, we kick off the fall pledge drive with a conversation about the importance of independent media in the current political landscape. Allen is joined in the studio by John Nichols and Bob McChesney to discuss threats to democracy, battling the 24-hour news cycle, and the role of media in culture and politics.
John Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times, and the associate editor of The Capital Times.
Bob McChesney is an activist scholar and professor in the department of communication at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. He specializes in the history and political economy of mass communication and the role media plays in capitalist societies.
McChesney and Nichols have coauthored the books It’s the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories), Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (New Press), The Death and Life of American Journalism (Nation Books), Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street; and People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy (Nation Books).