News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works

By Paul H. Weaver

Book Overview

Argues that news organizations often foster a haze of untruth that obscures and distorts the meaning of events, and that this culture of lying is the result of hidden structural relations, such as the media's need to serve the interests of advertising sponsors.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0029340217
• ISBN13: 9780029340219
• Release Date: June 1994
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Interesting, but narrow.....

I enjoyed this book because I have long believed that we live in a "Culture of Lies" and modern journalism is one of the powerful contributors to the broader phenomenon. However, I disagree with the reviewer that described the work as one of careful analysis and an argument against big business, and I thought the author missed a far larger issue... Weaver's arguments for the failure of modern journalism are persuasive, for sure, and he provides excellent historical context for how journalism has evolved from an objective, subscriber-driven presentation of news to the advertising-driven, editorialized news we have today (written in a style that pretends to objectivity but is anything but). However, Weaver's prescriptions reminded me of political platitudes in presenting a long list of "we shoulds" without a strong argument for why any of it is likely to happen or a persuasive road map of how to make it happen. Weaver describes himself as a classical liberal, so one would not assume that he would impose change upon journalism through regulation, but why corporations would voluntarily switch their business models and change their editorial policies at the risk of making their products more boring just escapes me. More importantly, Weaver's book ignores (in his defense, probably on purpose) the other side of the "Culture of Lying" problem: why the demand for entertainment seems to exceed the demand for truth. I would argue that we all know that our journalists impose their opinions upon the news without declaring their biases, just as we expect our politicians and our corporate leaders to spin information to their advantage without any disclaimers. Even in polite cocktail conversation, we have all become masters of reducing complex issues down to urbane soundbites and ascerbic witticisms--because there appears to be only one thing more criminal today than shading the truth and that is, apparently, to be boring. The more clever the soundbite, the more outrageous the headline, the more ridiculous the political platitude, the more we like it and the more life an idea takes on. Whether the underlying presumption is true or not is rarely challenged, in real-time, because (a) we don't have time, (b) to do so would destroy the rhythm of the conversation, or (c) we are so cynical that we don't assume anyone is telling the whole truth anyway and therefore don't care one way or the other. Weaver's book is good because he provides excellent insider insight into how the news is determined and presented, but he fails to address why we all just eat it up anyway. The implication by omission is that the public is stupid (or tragically innocent) and therefore it is up to journalism to reform itself out of the goodness of its heart and for the betterment of humankind (because Weaver would not likely support coerced change). I don't think this is likely.The more fundamental question would have been WHY we all choose entertainment over truth as the chief val

Corporate News and the Individual as Journalist

Paul Weaver uses rich ethnographic material and careful analysis to craft another clear picture of how big business fails America - news is largely a "front stage performance" (to borrow a phrase from Irving Goffman) that reflects little of what is actually going on. This excellent piece of participant observation research is equally revealing of the Corporate system of control based on editocracy, worker selection and socialization.Paul Weaver's "Suicidal Corporation" (1988) was the first ethnography of the rhetoric of corporations that usurps the language of free market economics in order to disguise the fact that they are in reality creations of the state, and as such, behave just as bureaucratically as their parent; such is the nature of government. Further, a government-generated competitive business cycle is not a free market. We are being duped, and Weaver knows it.Weaver's "News and the Culture of Lying" is a further investigation into why corporations pay lip service to free enterprise but practice big government, and how they pull that off.Both of Weaver's books will interest any student of sociology or anthropology. His ethnographic case studies are good examples of doing the ethnography of corporations.Lastly, Weaver's books deserve a place on everyone's shelf alongside George Orwell's "1984" and a DVD of "Fahrenheit 451".

This book should be reprinted

An excellent, tell-it-like-is book about the mass media. It didn't receive nearly enough attention from reviewers or the general public. A couple of years ago, I planned on requiring my journalism students to read it but then found out it had just gone out of print. It should be reprinted.