Category Archives: Media

Review of Douglas Kellner’s: American Nightmare. Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism

Book Reviews - Politics, Media


© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)

Donald Trump developed skills in marketing and show business, as a savvy self-marketer and a reality TV star, able to exploit new media — to plaster his name on the side of buildings, on boxes of steaks, and on a fake university. He’s something of a 21st-century version of P.T. Barnum, able to garner popular attention, but with new media unavailable to the 19th-century showman/con-artist. Continue reading Review of Douglas Kellner’s: American Nightmare. Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism →

Who Owns the Media?

Freedom, Media

Almost all media that citizens of the United States are exposed to comes from the same six sources. And when a few of the world’s wealthiest corporations control all of the news and commentary, only limited political perspectives will be disseminated. The United States, according to the 2016 World Press Freedom Report Index of Reporters Without Borders, ranks as only the 41st freest press in the world. (The USA has slipped to #48 in the 2019 rankings.) The US ranks behind Namibia, Surinam, Tonga, and Slovenia and just ahead of Botswana, Niger, Romania, and Haiti.

NOTE:  I had an infographic to show this but it kept getting removed.