Massey, Kimberly B.
Mayfield Publishing Company

Reviewer: Ronald Bishop
Drexel University
Website: http://httpsrv.ocs.drexel.edu/faculty/bishoprc/

I've been trying for a couple of years to find a way out of using a traditional textbook for my class in mass media in society. I don't intend this as a slam against these works or their authors; I simply find that most textbooks do a poor job of representing a wide range of viewpoints (read: left or liberal viewpoints) on the impact of the media. My students generally pick up the omission; while their discovery gives me the opportunity to introduce these writers in class, I'd rather start off with a book that is a bit more inclusive.

Kimberly Massey's anthology, "Readings in Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture" gives me the impetus I need to make this move. Drawing on an impressive array of writers -- from the left, center, and right, from mainstream and alternative journalists -- Massey has created an outstanding work. Massey has cobbled together the book from articles about the media found, if you'll pardon the repetition, in the popular media. But she does not only use articles that lionize the media or excuse their excess. Thus, readers are exposed to Todd Gitlin's analysis of the length of sentences in New York Times' bestsellers, bell hooks' probing, troubling look at how mainstream media have tried to impede the progress of feminism, and Robert McChesney's essay in which he claims that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 favors corporations, not the public in whose interest broadcasters are supposed to act.

In short, this is a work of what some might consider marginalized voices. But this does not mean that the mainstream is without representation. Included in the text, for example, is a speech given by CBS anchor Dan Rather in 1993 at the annual Radio and Television News Directors Association convention. Rather uses a tribute to famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow as a springboard to a discussion about how broadcasting is perilously close to confirming Murrow's prediction that television, when used to sell and not to educate, is "merely wires and lights in a box." Massey also includes billionaire Warren Buffet's dissection of the tobacco industry's use of some questionable public relations tactics to keep Americans hooked on tobacco products. Buffet's essay follows an excerpt from Stuart Ewen's fascinating book "PR! A Social History of Spin," in which Ewen argues that treating America as little more than an agglomeration of splintered demographic groups does serious damage to the concept of democracy.

While Massey has included a number of older pieces in the anthology, there is more than enough new material. In the book's section on advertising, for example, Massey features 1997 articles by Carey Goldberg on "Buy Nothing Day," in which he urges readers to look critically at their participation in our consumer culture, and by Mark Landler on the use by advertising agencies of ad-directed cynicism and self-parody in newer campaigns.

If there is a weakness in the book, it is in the sections on communications theory and research. Joshua Meyrowitz' discussion of medium theory was helpful, for example, but might not resonate with a student in an introductory mass media class without additional selections that discuss earlier theories -- or, how the field got to the point that it produced medium theory.

Perhaps Massey's decision to use only works found in the popular media hamstrings her here. In the research section, for example, she offers the hooks article, and articles dealing with the portrayal of Asian-Americans and the question of how bias finds its way into the mainstream media. The media already do a fairly good job of covering these issues. But equally important areas of research are not covered. Thus, while this section is a good start for a student of communication, there should be more to reflect the range of research being done in the field. I would also include more questions for discussion (for all the readings in the book) and perhaps some activities that would allow students to apply the concepts described by the authors.

But this is nitpicking -- I can supplement Massey's book with handouts. In the end, this is a solid compendium of material from voices that students in many mass media classes rarely get to hear. This kind of range is especially important today; if there's a downside to our "age of information," it's that so much of what comes hurtling at us doesn't challenge us, and, perhaps as important, doesn't encourage us to challenge our cultural and social institutions. Massey's book gives students the tools to begin doing just that.