JOURNALISTS AND THEIR SHADOWS

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Part memoir, part social history, Journalists and Their Shadows captures the deplorable state of the American media in our time—recording its deterioration, its moments of crisis and ultimately, its transformation as seen through the eyes of a journalist engaged at its very heart through all its phases. The American media’s dysfunctional relationship with the national security state today is strikingly reminiscent of how it was in the Cold War’s earliest days. As a result, the media has entered into a period of profound transformation, in the course of which independent media are emerging as the profession’s most dynamic sector.

“Patrick Lawrence, as witty and cunning as they come, has written both a rapturous and knife-wielding history of journalism in the post WWII days of America’s containment. His love for our flawed profession and his delight in having been in the mix of it makes his regrets and criticisms ring with only the best of intentions. It also is a hell of a lot of fun to read.” SEYMOUR HERSH

“This richly evocative book masquerades as the memoir of a globe-trotting foreign correspondent.  At heart it is much more: the poignant story of how an idealistic reporter watched his beloved profession collapse.  This is a vivid account of how American journalism degenerated into public relations, what effect that has had on our democracy, and what we can do about it.” STEPHEN KINZER

“Patrick Lawrence has written an outstanding, eloquent book about journalism. It is angry and bracing and wise, and it gives us hope. It says the subversion of much of our craft to raw propaganda is not yet complete and a ‘Fifth Estate’ of independent truth-tellers is rising. One truth is enduring: that we journalists are nothing if not servants of people, never of power.” JOHN PILGER

“For anyone who takes seriously the Jeffersonian assertion that a free press is the essential condition of a government of the free, this quite brilliant and thankfully pithy alarm bell of a book by veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Lawrence is an indispensable read.” —ROBERT SCHEER

“A vital, timely book to understand what’s long been wrong with establishment media, which has grown far worse since 9/11.”JOE LAURIA

Today, American mainstream journalism has lost all credibility due to its role as agent of power. From a long personal effort to see and tell the truth in both mainstream and independent news outlets, Patrick Lawrence makes an eloquent plea for the revival of honest journalism…” DIANA JOHNSTONE

“Patrick Lawrence draws from a lifetime of hard-won experience and wisdom to chronicle, eulogize, and resurrect the spirit of an American journalism dedicated to the truth. Journalists and Their Shadows is a sober and heartening read in these cataclysmic times!AARON GOOD, PhD, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

       

 

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Description

Part memoir, part social history, Journalists and Their Shadows captures the deplorable state of the American media in our time—recording its deterioration, its moments of crisis and ultimately, its transformation as seen through the eyes of a journalist engaged at its very heart through all its phases. The press had a bad Cold War, Patrick Lawrence contends, and never recovered from it, having never acknowledged its errors and so unable to learn from them.

Its dysfunctional relationship with the national security state today is strikingly reminiscent of how it was in the Cold War’s earliest days. With remarkable fidelity, all the old errors are being repeated. As a result, the mainstream American media have entered into a period of profound transformation, in the course of which independent media are emerging as the profession’s most dynamic sector—and represent, indeed, the promise of a brilliant future.

A weave of three elements, Lawrence’s book offers a searing cultural and political critique, punctuated by the kind of piquant detail only insiders can provide. He also makes the case for a way forward—an optimistic case based on the vitality now apparent among independent media. Here, too, he is at home, providing the book’s most original coverage of this brave new world. He draws upon many years in the profession, a multitude of mainstream outlets. As a journalist, he has written for numerous publications, from the Guardian (US ), the New York Times, the Daily News, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and The Christian Science Monitor to the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review. His foreign affairs and media commentary has appeared in a variety of publications such as Salon, CounterPunch, The Nation, Raritan, Consortium News, ScheerPost, Current Concerns, Horizons et débats, and Zeit–Fragen.

Shadows probes the psychological dilemma that must be understood if we are to address the current crisis. Journalists in our time are divided within themselves—driven to meet thoroughly professional but ideologically conformist standards, but on the other, subliminally struggling to breach the barriers that preclude the truths they know should be conveyed. This latter, as Jung has put it, is the journalist’s shadow. Shadows’ case for the reintegration of the divided journalist is striking and original. This record of the American media’s increasingly shabby betrayal of the public trust sheds light on why the American public thought and thinks the way it does, how it has become aware that the truth it seeks is absent, and where and how it may yet be able to ferret it out.

Here is a guide to the future, in fact, of journalism itself

Book Details

ISBN:

9781949762785

EBOOK ISBN

978-1-949762-79-2

Publication Date

2023

Pages

159

Options

EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Author

Patrick Lawrence

Reviews

1 review for JOURNALISTS AND THEIR SHADOWS

  1. World Wide Work bulletin

    Journalists and Their Shadows by Patrick Lawrence (Clarity). A veteran journalist critiques the close relationship between the corporate media and those who wield economic and political power, and encourages the public to look to independent journalism for factual information. “We can no longer read…the corporate press to…know what happened,” he writes. Now we read “to know what we are supposed to think happened. Then we go in search of accurate accounts of what happened.” WOrld WIde WOrk

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