Former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, whose How to Talk Back to Your Television Set helped spark a media reform movement, is back with more complaints and suggestions for understanding and improving the mass media. Whatever your first priority, he urges, everyone's second priority should be media reform.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, concerns about fake news have fostered calls for government regulation and industry intervention to mitigate the influence of false content. These proposals are hindered by a lack of consensus concerning the definition of fake news or its origins. Media scholar Nolan Higdon contends that expanded access to critical media literacy education, grounded in a comprehensive history of fake news, is a more promising solution to these issues. The Anatomy of Fake News offers the first historical examination of fake news that takes as its goal the effective teaching of critical news literacy in the United States. Higdon employs a critical-historical media ecosystems approach to identify the producers, themes, purposes, and influences of fake news. The findings are then incorporated into an invaluable fake news detection kit. This much-needed resource provides a rich history and a promising set of pedagogical strategies for mitigating the pernicious influence of fake news.

Democracies are under attack in many countries including our own. Wannabe dictators feel threatened by democraciesÕ existence. Their destructive efforts are abetted by democraciesÕ citizen apathy. This book examines the institutions, the ÒcolumnsÓ that support democracy. They include such institutions as independent media, K-12 and higher education, respected, independent judges, accessible voting systems, and public libraries. These institutions support both an active citizenry and meaningful checks on executivesÕ abuses. This book calls Americans to action Ð with suggestions. It also contains the authorÕs ÒcolumnsÓ Ð an example of citizen use of the column of democracy called media.

We are the only species able to talk ourselves into difficulties that would not otherwise exist, from divorce to war. Here's a book full of practical suggestions on how to use our language to improve our lives.

The new and improved "Censored," detailing the top censored stories and media analysis of 2020. Our nation's oldest news-monitoring group, Project Censored, refreshes its longstanding yearbook series, Censored, with State of the Free Press 2021. This edition offers a more succinct and comprehensive survey of the most important but underreported news stories of 2020; in addition to a comparative analysis of the current state of corporate and independent news media, and its effect on democracy. The establishment media sustains a decrepit post-truth era, as examined the lowlight features: "Junk Food News"-frivolous stories that distract the public from actual news-and-"News Abuse"-important stories covered in ways that undermine public understanding. The alternative media provokes a burgeoning critical media literacy age, as evaluated in the highlight feature: "Media Democracy in Action"-relevant stories responsibly reported on by independent organizations. Finally, in an homage to the history of the annual report, the editors reinstate the "Déjà vu News" feature-revisited stories from previous editions. State of the Free Press 2021 endows readers with the critical thinking and media literacy skills required to hold the corporate media to account for distorting or censoring news coverage, and thus, to revitalize our democracy.

From the former chief economist of the FCC, a remarkable history of the U.S. government’s regulation of the airwaves Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. In this fascinating and entertaining history, Thomas Winslow Hazlett, a distinguished scholar in law and economics, debunks the idea that the U.S. government stepped in to impose necessary order. Instead, regulators blocked competition at the behest of incumbent interests and, for nearly a century, have suppressed innovation while quashing out-of-the-mainstream viewpoints. Hazlett details how spectrum officials produced a “vast wasteland” that they publicly criticized but privately protected. The story twists and turns, as farsighted visionaries—and the march of science—rise to challenge the old regime. Over decades, reforms to liberate the radio spectrum have generated explosive progress, ushering in the “smartphone revolution,” ubiquitous social media, and the amazing wireless world now emerging. Still, the author argues, the battle is not even half won.

Nicholas Johnson and eight law students in the University of Iowa Cyberspace Law Seminar, Spring 2009, investigate everything from property rights in virtual worlds to domestic cyber attacks to K-12 students' rights with their online, off-campus speech.

Test Pattern for Living is a kind of guidebook for anyone thinking about what they are doing with their life and why -- whether happy and wanting to stay that way, or working their way through one of life's many stresses. As such it touches on everything from camping to cooking, from religious values to the values of corporate advertising, the role of love and sexuality, and many, many more subjects. It leaves you making your own choices. But it frees you to ask what other choices you might have made if corporate media hadn't spent billions of dollars trying to persuade you to make the choices that maximize their profits.

The annual yearbook from Project Censored features the year's most underreported news stories, striving to unmask censorship, self-censorship, and propaganda in corporate-controlled media outlets. Censored 2016 features the top-25 most underreported stories, as voted by scholars, journalists, and activists across the country and around the world, as well as chapters exploring timely issues from the previous year with more in-depth analysis.

In 2009, a bipartisan Knight Commission found that while the broadband age is enabling an info. and commun. renaissance, local communities in particular are being unevenly served with critical info. about local issues. Soon after the Knight Commission delivered its findings, the FCC initiated a working group to identify crosscurrent and trend, and make recommendations on how the info. needs of communities can be met in a broadband world. This report by the FCC Working Group on the Info. Needs of Communities addresses the rapidly changing media landscape in a broadband age. Contents: Media Landscape; The Policy and Regulatory Landscape; Recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.