Robert W Mcchesney
Biographic Data
| ID | 315932 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert W Mcchesney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert W |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcchesney |
| SIGNATURE | MCCHESNEY R W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 92 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 187 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 90 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Capitalism in the Age of Digital Technology
In this transcript of a talk from 2015, Robert W. McChesney discusses the great definitional communication revolutions that have shaped humanity's trajectory. Even a decade ago, McChesney was able to see the fraught relationship between new technology and democracy, the re-emergence of fascism, and the political dangers of the Digital Age
Fiftieth Anniversary Retrospective on Pomfret (Class of 1971)
Writing upon the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from Pomfret School in Connecticut, Robert W. Chesney shares in his own words the story of his intellectual development, from his teen years through his studies at The Evergreen State College, and how they shaped his career as a journalist and activist—including his role as coeditor of MR
Neoliberalism and Neofascism
As we mourn the loss of prolific MR author and media advocate Robert W. McChesney, we are grateful to be able to publish an excerpt from his introduction to John Bellamy Foster's Trump in the White House (Monthly Review Press, 2017). In this insightful analysis, McChesney explains how neoliberal restructuring prepared paved the way for Trump and the neofascist MAGA movement to reach the dizzying heights of power that they have reached today
Socialism—A Time to Retreat: The Perspective of 'Monthly Review' at the Opening of the Twenty-First Century
In this reprise from September 2000, Harry Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, and Robert W. McChesney look forward to the future of Monthly Review in the twenty-first century: "Despite mistakes, setbacks, and recognition that the road is long and arduous, we must not waver as we continue to study, educate, and be missionaries for the transcendence of the social system of capitalism and the development...of a society of equals
Strategies for Media Reform: International Perspectives
Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform?Prepared by thirty-three scholars and activists from more than twenty-five co…
The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending
Farewell to Journalism? Time for a rethinking
Journalism is in freefall collapse in the United States, and, to varying degrees, elsewhere. Unless there is a dramatic rethinking in the United States, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, all signs point to a continued deterioration of journalism. By all known political theory this means the continuation of credible democratic governance will be impossible. Hence this is a crisis of the greatest possible magnitude
The Personal Is Political: The Political Economy of Noncommercial Radio Broadcasting in the United States
In this essay, I look at the problems facing progressives and those on the political left in the United States in participating in political analysis and debate in mainstream journalism and the news media. I focus on radio broadcasting, as this is where much of political discussion takes place in the United States. Radio broadcasting is the least expensive of the media for production and reception, is ubiquitous, has adapted itself to the Interne…
The International Political Economy of Communication: Media and Power in South America
This collection reflects on the international political economy of media and the valuable lessons to be learned from the media reforms currently taking place across South America. The contributors pre
Surveillance Capitalism: Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age
The United States came out of the Second World War as the hegemonic power in the world economy. The war had lifted the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression by providing the needed effective demand in the form of endless orders for armaments and troops. Real output rose by 65 percent between 1940 and 1944, and industrial production jumped by 90 percent. At the immediate end of the war, due to the destruction of the European and Japanese econom…
Sharp Left Turn for the Media Reform Movement: Toward a Post-Capitalist Democracy
The contemporary media reform movement exploded into prominence in the United States in 2003 as a response to the effort by the Bush Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to weaken media ownership regulations.... The size and success of this popular uprising was...a testament to the power of activism to thwart the plans of the powerful in seemingly hopeless conditions.... The Obama campaign in 2007 and 2008 expressed interest in media reform an…
Rupert Murdoch: Not Silent, But Deadly
Rupert Murdoch is unquestionably the single most important media figure of our times. He is a dominant force in the journalism and politics of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Whether the world would be the same with some other person playing the same role had he never been born is an academic matter. In this world, Murdoch controls a vast media empire, which pushes his political agenda and his commercial ambitions. One studi…
News Media as Political Institutions
This chapter discusses research on the policies, laws, and subsidies that create and shape the organizational structures and practices that form the basis of the news media. The research reviewed treats news media institutions as political actors and makes assumptions about journalism’s importance in a democratic society. Although this line of research, with its emphasis on political economic and normative questions, often has been marginalized i…
The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital: An Introduction
The past half-century has been dominated by the rise of media to a commanding position in the social life of most people and nations, to the point where it is banal to regard this as the "information age." The once-dazzling ascension of television in the 1950s and '60s now looks like the horse-and-buggy era when one assesses the Internet, smartphones, and the digital revolution. For social theorists of all stripes communication has moved to cente…
The Political Economy of Communication: An Idiosyncratic Presentation of an Emerging Subfield
The political economy of communication has three main components. First, it addresses in a critical manner how the media system interacts with and affects the overall disposition of power in society. Second, it examines how market structures, advertising support, labor relations, profit motivation, technologies, and government policies shape media industries, journalistic practices, occupational sociology, and the nature and content of the news a…
Farewell to Journalism: Time for a rethinking
Farewell to Journalism: Time for a rethinking
The Endless Crisis
The Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession began in the United States in 2007 and quickly spread across the globe, marking what appears to be a turning point in world history. Although this was followed within two years by a recovery phase, the world economy five years after the onset of the crisis is still in the doldrums.... The one bright spot in the world economy, from a growth standpoint, has been the seemingly unstoppable expansion …
The Bull Market: Political Advertising
The United States is in the midst of its quadrennial presidential election, a process that now extends so long as to be all but permanent. The campaign is also drenched in more money given by a small handful of billionaires than has been the case in the past. Since the 1970s the amount spent on political campaigns has increased dramatically in almost every election cycle. It has led to the formation of what we term the "money-and-media election c…
The Global Stagnation and China
Five years after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began there is still no sign of a full recovery of the world economy. Consequently, concern has increasingly shifted from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation, causing some to dub the current era the Great Stagnation. Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen as feeding into one another.... To be sure, a few emerging economies have seemingly bucked the general trend,…
The Wisconsin Uprising
The essays in Wisconsin Uprising are outstanding. The accounts of the events in Madison in the winter and early spring of 2011 are the best I have seen in writing, with context, detail, and analysis I have seen nowhere else. Better yet, the connections of the Wisconsin revolt to the existential questions facing the labor movement are handled with a clarity, intelligence, perspective, and urgency that is exactly appropriate to the task. This book …
This Isn't What Democracy Looks Like
On the brink of the 2012 presidential election, and without considering that electoral contest itself, it is useful to comment on the state of U.S. democracy. The most striking lesson from contemporary U.S. election campaigns is how vast and growing the distance is between the rhetoric and pronouncements of the politicians and pundits and the actual deepening, immense, and largely ignored problems that afflict the people of the United States.... …
The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital
In a 1997 article entitled "More (or Less) on Globalization," Paul Sweezy referred to "the three most important underlying trends in the recent history of capitalism, the period beginning with the recession of 1974-75: (1) the slowing down of the overall rate of growth; (2) the worldwide proliferation of monopolistic (or oligopolistic) multinational corporations; and (3) what may be called the financialization of the capital accumulation process.…
Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism
A striking paradox animates political economy in our times. On the one hand, mainstream economics and much of left economics discuss our era as one of intense and increased competition among businesses, now on a global scale. It is a matter so self-evident as no longer to require empirical verification or scholarly examination. On the other hand, wherever one looks, it seems that nearly every industry is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. F…
The crisis of journalism and the Internet
The Problem of Journalism: A political economic contribution to an explanation of the crisis in contemporary US journalism
In this article I present a political economic critique of contemporary US journalism, emphasizing the origins and limitations of professional journalism, the commercial attack upon journalism, and the right-wing critique of the liberal media. In my view, the US polity is enmeshed in a deep crisis and the collapse of a viable journalism is a significant factor--but by no means the only one--in explaining the shriveled and dilapidated state of US …
Surveillance Capitalism: Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age
The United States came out of the Second World War as the hegemonic power in the world economy. The war had lifted the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression by providing the needed effective demand in the form of endless orders for armaments and troops. Real output rose by 65 percent between 1940 and 1944, and industrial production jumped by 90 percent. At the immediate end of the war, due to the destruction of the European and Japanese econom…
The Endless Crisis
The Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession began in the United States in 2007 and quickly spread across the globe, marking what appears to be a turning point in world history. Although this was followed within two years by a recovery phase, the world economy five years after the onset of the crisis is still in the doldrums.... The one bright spot in the world economy, from a growth standpoint, has been the seemingly unstoppable expansion …
The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism
In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North's preexisting production—is now being offshored to the global South, where it is feeding the rapid industrialization of a handful of emerging economies. It …
The Internet and U. S. Communication Policy-Making in Historical and Critical Perspective
Global Media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism
In conventional parlance, the current era in history is generally characterized as one of globalization, technological revolution, and democratization. In all three of these areas media and communication play a central, perhaps even a defining, role. Economic and cultural globalization arguably would be impossible without a global commercial media system to promote global markets and to encourage consumer values. The very essence of the technolog…
News Media as Political Institutions
This chapter discusses research on the policies, laws, and subsidies that create and shape the organizational structures and practices that form the basis of the news media. The research reviewed treats news media institutions as political actors and makes assumptions about journalism’s importance in a democratic society. Although this line of research, with its emphasis on political economic and normative questions, often has been marginalized i…
The political economy of communication and the future of the field
Farewell to Journalism: Time for a rethinking
The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending
he United States is unique today among major states in the degree of its reliance on military spending, and its determination to stand astride the world, militarily as well as economically. No other country in the post-Second World War world has been so globally destructive or inflicted so many war fatalities. Since 2001, acknowledged U.S. national defense spending has increased by almost 60 percent in real dollar terms to a level in 2007 of $553…
Theses on media deregulation
Farewell to Journalism: Time for a rethinking
The Global Stagnation and China
Five years after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began there is still no sign of a full recovery of the world economy. Consequently, concern has increasingly shifted from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation, causing some to dub the current era the Great Stagnation. Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen as feeding into one another.... To be sure, a few emerging economies have seemingly bucked the general trend,…
The Internet's Unholy Marriage to Capitalism
The United States and the world are now a good two decades into the Internet revolution, or what was once called the information age. The past generation has seen a blizzard of mind-boggling developments in communication, ranging from the World Wide Web and broadband, to ubiquitous cell phones that are quickly becoming high-powered wireless computers in their own right.... The full impact of the Internet revolution will only become apparent in th…
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time—it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much…
Press-Radio Relations and the Emergence of Network, Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1930-1935
The Penal State in an Age of Crisis
As a rule, crime and social protest rise in periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. During times of economic and social instability, the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the general population, more disposed to adopt harsh measures to safeguard their positions at the apex of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the economic growth rate of U.S. capitalism beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s—converging with the emergence o…
The U.S. Media Reform Movement: Going Forward
All social scholarship ultimately is about understanding the world to change it, even if the change we want is to preserve that which we most treasure in the status quo. This is especially and immediately true for political economy of media as a field of study, where research has a direct and important relationship with policies and structures that shape media and communication and influence the course of society. Because of this, too, the politi…
The Internet and U. S. Communication Policy-Making in Historical and Critical Perspective: McChesney
Is There Any Hope for Cultural Studies
Cultural studies has developed as a significant new academic discipline at the end of the 20th century. An important spawning ground for contemporary cultural studies was the intellectual ferment surrounding the British new left of the 1950s and 1960s. Associated with such figures as Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, cultural studies sought to link working-class culture to domination and social liberation. Although linked with socialist polit…
The Global Struggle for Democratic Communication
Since the first systems of mass media and telecommunications emerged, their control and structure have been political issues. It has been well understood that the control over the means of communication is an integral aspect of political and economic power. Perhaps the most striking feature of our current age is the increase in prominence—for economics, politics, and culture—of technologically advanced systems of communication and information, th…
Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934
Journal Article Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934. By Susan Smulyan. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. viii, 223 pp. $24.95, ISBN 1-56098-312-4.) Get access Robert W. McChesney Robert W. McChesney University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Page 309, https://doi…
Free Speech and Democracy! Louis G. Caldwell, the American Bar Association and the Debate over the Free Speech Implications of Broadcast Regulation, 1928-1938
Journal Article Free Speech and Democracy! Louis G. Caldwell, the American Bar Association and the Debate over the Free Speech Implications of Broadcast Regulation, 1928–1938 Get access Robert W. Mcchesney Robert W. Mcchesney Assistant Professor *School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volu…
Sharp Left Turn for the Media Reform Movement: Toward a Post-Capitalist Democracy
The contemporary media reform movement exploded into prominence in the United States in 2003 as a response to the effort by the Bush Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to weaken media ownership regulations.... The size and success of this popular uprising was...a testament to the power of activism to thwart the plans of the powerful in seemingly hopeless conditions.... The Obama campaign in 2007 and 2008 expressed interest in media reform an…
Listen Keynesians, It's the System! Response to Palley
In an article entitled "Listen, Keynesians!," published in January 1983 in Monthly Review, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued that the radical break that John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) represented for orthodox economics lay in the fact that "For the first time the possibility was frankly faced, indeed placed at the very center of the analysis, that breakdowns of the accumulation process, the heart …
The Political Economy of the Mass Media: An Interview with Edward Herman
Over the past generation, it has become increasingly clear to those on the left that the U.S. mass media, far from performing an autonomous and adversarial role in U.S. society, actively frame issues and promote news stories that serve the needs and concerns of the elite. Moreover, the importance of the leading corporate mass media in contemporary politics radically transcends the role of the mass media in earlier times. Hence, the Left has begun…
The Battle for the U.S. Airwaves, 1928–1935
Journal Article The Battle for the U.S. Airwaves, 1928–1935 Get access Robert W. McChesney Robert W. McChesney Assistant Professor 1School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 40, Issue 4, December 1990, Pages 29–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1990.tb02281.x Published: 07 February 2006
An Almost Incredible Absurdity for a Democracy
Free Speech and Democracy! Louis G. Caldwell, the American Bar Association and the Debate over the Free Speech Implications of Broadcast Regulation, 1928-1938
Journal Article Free Speech and Democracy! Louis G. Caldwell, the American Bar Association and the Debate over the Free Speech Implications of Broadcast Regulation, 1928–1938 Get access Robert W. Mcchesney Robert W. Mcchesney Assistant Professor *School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volu…
Press-Radio Relations and the Emergence of Network, Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1930-1935
Media and Democracy: The Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1927-1935
state of U.S. polity and culture. Much of the commentary and analysis is quite critical, as one might expect, particularly when the topic is the deplorable state of U.S. political culture (1). Often this criticism emphasizes how oligopolistic corporate control and the reliance upon commercial advertising for support tend to under mine the media's capacity to fulfill their democratic function (2). At the same time, however, most critics ac cept th…
Dedication
December 1933-January 1935: The Statutory Consolidation of the Status Quo
Although the network-dominated, advertising-supported system of U.S. broadcasting largely had stabilized in an economic sense as an industry by 1932 or 1933, its legal status remained indeterminate considering the temporary basis of regulation mandated by the Radio Act of 1927 through the FRC. Given the generally accepted nature of the ether as a public resource subject to public control, this was hardly a tenable situation for the two major chai…
Conclusion
A major objective of this study has been to indicate the extent to which there was organized popular opposition to commercial broadcasting in the United States, and to discredit the notion that the American people went along with the establishment of the status quo with barely a glimmer of dissent. The deterministic stance is based upon an assessment of the popular response to radio by the mid-192os, which follows from the presupposition that the…
Summer I 932: The Battle on Capitol Hill
The first wave of broadcast reform activity took place between 1930 and 1932 and was directed toward having reform legislation passed by Congress. The reformers came to Washington full of outrage for commercial broadcasting and optimism regarding the prospects for reform. This chapter will chronicle and evaluate their efforts and also discuss the controversy surrounding the ABA Standing Committee on Communications, which emerged as a significant …
January 1935 and Beyond: The Ideological Consolidation of the Status Quo
In the period following the FCC report to Congress in January 1935 the remainder of the broadcast reform movement lost its momentum and collapsed. Moreover, with this collapse, there was little opposition to the widely disseminated promotional claims of the commercial broadcasters that their control of the ether was innately democratic and American; indeed, that no other system could even be conceivable to a freedom-loving people.
Principal Characters
Subject Literature Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Title Pages
General Order 40 and the Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting, 1925-1930
The roots of the battle for the control of U.S. broadcasting lay in the 1920s. This chapter reviews the major developments of this decade, first looking at the nature of U.S. broadcasting as it emerged in the years 1920-1927, and then discussing the deliberations surrounding the passage of the Radio Act of 1927. The chapter concludes by evaluating the important general reallocation of the airwaves instituted by the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) …
The Broadcast Reform Movement I: The Payne Fund and Ferment Among the Educators
In the aftermath of General Order 40, the contours of the network-dominated, advertising-supported broadcasting system fell into place with astonishing speed. Almost as quickly, a coherent and organized opposition to commercial broadcasting emerged in the United States. This chapter and the next will profile the elements of the broadcast reform movement that dotted the political landscape between 1930 and 1935, focusing on clarifying the origins,…
The Broadcast Reform Movement II: Nonprofit Broadcasters, Civic Organizations, and Intellectuals
While the activities sponsored by the Payne Fund, the NCER, and the Ventura Free Press radio campaign would play a paramount role in the broadcast reform movement of the early 1930s, they were by no means alone. The broadcast reform movement enjoyed the participation of three other displaced and harassed non profit broadcasters: the Chicago Federation of Labor’s WCFL, which was the official station of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the N…
Autumn 1932-December 1933: The Battle for Public Opinion and the White House
The collapse of the efforts to have broadcast reform legislation considered and passed by Congress in the spring of 1932 marked the beginning of an eighteen-month period in which Congress barely considered any communications legislation. During this interregnum, the broadcast reform movement basically came to abandon lobbying on Capitol Hill and directed its attention and resources in other directions. Perhaps most important, the reformers attemp…
The Broadcast Reform Movement versus the Radio Lobby: Arguments, Proposals, Programs, and Problems
The broadcast reform movement generated an extensive critique of commercial broadcasting and its limitations for the communication requirements of a democratic society. While there was general consensus on the core elements of this critique, the reformers disagreed about alternatives to the status quo. The assorted broadcast reformers had difficulty working in unison, thereby only magnifying the difficulty of their task of reconstructing U.S. bro…
Abbreviations
Critical Communication Research at the Crossroads
Journal Article Critical Communication Research at the Crossroads Get access Robert W. McChesney Robert W. McChesney 1Robert W. McChesney is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 43, Issue 4, December 1993, Pages 98–104, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb0130…
Images of American Life: A History of Ideological Management in School, Movies, Radio, and Television
Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935
Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History
Journal Article Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History. Ed. by William S. Solomon and Robert W. McChesney. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. x, 389 pp. Cloth, $39.95, ISBN 0-8166-2169-1. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 0-8166-2170-5.) Get access Richard B. Kielbowicz Richard B. Kielbowicz University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal …
Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio
Journal Article Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio. By James A. Hijiya. (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1992. 182 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-934223-23-8.) Get access Robert W. McChesney Robert W. McChesney University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 1, June 1994, Page 310, https://doi.org/10.2307/2081105 Published: 01 June 19…
Radical Scholarship in the Academy: The View From Communications
I began my graduate work in communications in the autumn of 1983. This was a turbulent and dramatic period of change for communication research; in particular, the recent emergence in the United States of critical studies in communication had torn asunder the guise of scientific neutrality that had masked the ideological premises of dominant mainstream communication research for decades. As one who had come to communication from history and econo…
Political science (79 works) · Law (61 works) · Sociology (59 works) · Politics (48 works) · Media studies (37 works) · Political economy (37 works) · History (32 works) · Economics (31 works) · Media Studies and Communication (24 works) · Computer Science (22 works)