Robert W. McChesney, an influential left -wing media aritor who argued that business ownership was bad for American journalism and that Silicon Valley billionaires who dominated online information were a threat to democracy, died in his house in Madison, Wis on 25 March. He was 72.
The cause was Glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, his wife, ingene stole, said.
Professor McChesney was both in the academic world – he had a Ph.D. In communication and taught at universities and ink-paper journalism: he was the founders of the Rocket, a music magazine in Seattle that rated the first single by Nirvana.
His primary thesis, expressed in more than a dozen books and in numerous articles and interviews, was that news media owned by companies were exaggerated in accordance with the political powers and that the views limited to which Americans were exposed. He further argued that the promise of the internet – from a Wild West market of opinions – was beaten by a few giant owners of online platforms.
An early book, “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” (1999), warned that consolidation in journalism would undermine democratic norms. In perhaps his best -known work, “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism the Internet Against Democracy” (2013), he rejected the utopian view that the digital revolution would herald an open border of information sources and strengthen democracy.
Instead, he showed how the internet destroyed the business model for newspapers, while replacing socially established reports about the local government with the lowest-community denominator Pluis: gossip, cat videos and personal navy-staring.
Professor McChesney blamed capitalism.
“The profit motif, commerce, public relations, marketing and advertisements – all determining characteristics of contemporary business capitalism – are fundamentally for every assessment of how the internet has developed and will probably develop,” he wrote.
A Unapologetic Socialist, Professor McChesney argued that the government should give all Americans $ 200 vouchers to donate to non -profit news broadcasts of their choice.
He campaigned for the presidential races of Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders gave the favor by writing an attacker to the book “Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex by Professor McChesney, written with John Nichols.
In an interview with Truthout, a non -profit news site focused on social justice, Professor McChesney attacked the reporting of the regular media about Mr Sanders in the presidential primary of 2016 that he lost to Hillary Clinton. CNN and MSNBC, he said, were deeply biased in favor of “central” candidates who represent the status quo.
“You can only imagine how Sanders would have done if he had covered MSNBC comparable to what Obama received in 2007-08,” said Professor McChesney.
The conservative writer David Horowitz placed Professor McChesney on a list of “101 most dangerous academics in America” in 2006, including him under “fixed radicals” that American students indoctrinated.
On the other hand, Utne Reader in 2008 called Professor McChesney as one of the “50 visionaries that change your world.”
Professor McChesney warned in 2016 that when company giants dominate online information – at the time those giants were Facebook and Google – they have too much power about what people know about the world.
“This is really, unlike everything from a distance close to a free press and a free society,” he said in an interview with the left -loving news outlet “Democracy now!”
The way to deal with such monopolies was to nationalize them, he said. He proposed a government takeover that would make colosses in a quasi-public service, such as the post office.
Professor McChesney was also one of the founders, in 2003, of a public interest group, Free Press, which opposed business consolidation in the news industry and that led to a national campaign for network neutrality, which called for equal access to the internet for all content producers, such as Netflix to individual bloggers.
Robert Waterman McChesney was born on December 22, 1952 in Cleveland, one of the two sons of Samuel P. McChesney Jr., an advertisement director of this week, a syndice magazine inserted in Sunday newspapers and Edna (McCorkle) McChesney.
He grew up in the suburb of Cleveland of Shaker Heights and went to Pomfret, a Prep School in Connecticut. In 1977 he graduated with a bachelor's degree at Evergreen State College, in Washington, where he studied politics and economy.
In 1979, after having worked as a sports stringer for UPI and an editor at the Seattle Sun, an alternative weekly, he became the publisher of the Rocket, who mapped the rise of the Grunge-Rock scene in Seattle in the 1980s and 90s.
Intellectually restless, he then registered at the Graduate School at the University of Washington and earned a Ph.D. In communication in 1989. He has been teaching in the Journalism and Mass Communication department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for ten years.
He and his wife, Dr. Stole, who also a Ph.D. In communication, then moved to the Urbana champaign of the University of Illinois, where he was the Gutgsell who was a professor in the communication department.
The books of Professor McChesney also include “Will the last reporter exhaust the lights?” (2011), with Victor Pickard, and “Business Media and the threat for democracy” (1997).
In addition to his wife, he is survived by their daughters, Amy and Lucy Mcchesney; And a brother, Samuel P. McChesney III.
In a late book, “People get ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy” (2016), written with Mr Nichols, professor McChesney argued that artificial intelligence and the digital revolution would eliminate countless jobs categories.
“Capitalism As we know, it is a very bad fitting with the technological revolution that we are starting to experience,” he said in an interview about the book.
“Our argument is that we currently have a civilian democracy,” he continued. “By that we mean a management system where all important decisions of the government are made to meet the interests and values of the richest and most powerful Americans, and the companies they possess.”
