Media Matters with Bob McChesney
Sundays at 1 pm Central on AM580
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.
Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."
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Sunday, August 24, 2008
Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It
This week our guest is Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. Durham's work centers on media and the politics of the body, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, race, and youth cultures. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals, including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Theory, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Women's Studies in Communication. She is the co-editor, with Douglas M. Kellner, of Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks.
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Sunday, August 17, 2008
Dave Zirin, author of A People's History of Sports in the United States
This week our guest is Dave Zirin. Zirin, Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, has been called "an icon in the world of progressive sports" and Robert Lipsyte says he is "the best young sportswriter in the United States." His column, Edge of Sports, appears on Sports Illustrated’s website, si.com. He is also the host of XM satellite’s weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio.
Zirin is, in addition, a columnist for SLAM Magazine, the Progressive, and the Philadelphia Weekly; a contributor to the Nation Magazine, and a regular op-ed writer for The Los Angeles Times.
Zirin’s next book, out this summer, is A People's History of Sports in the United States, part of Howard Zinn's People's History series for the New Press. He is also the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports (with a foreword by the immortal Chuck D.). His first book What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books) has entered its second printing and is available in stores and at haymarketbooks.org. He is also the author of The Muhammad Ali Handbook, published for MQ Publications.
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
This week our guest is Thomas Frank. Well-known author of What's the Matter with Kansas and Commodifying Dissent, Frank has recently been appointed a columnist at the Wall Street Journal. His new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, has just been released on Metropolitan Books.
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Sunday, August 03, 2008
Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director of Women in Media & News
This week our guest is Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director of Women in Media & News (WIMN), a national media analysis, education and advocacy group. Pozner founded Women In Media & News in 2001 to increase women's presence and power in the public debate through media analysis, education, advocacy and reform.
A widely published journalist and media critic, Pozner formerly directed the Women's Desk at the national media watch group FAIR, where she was a staff writer for Extra! magazine and the organizer of the national Feminist Coalition on Public Broadcasting. She also served as Media Watch columnist and contributing media editor for Sojourner: The Women's Forum.
Her essays have appeared in anthologies such as What Do We Do Now (a post-2004 election manifesto); The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women; Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century; Uncovering the Right on Campus; and Points and CounterPoints: Controversial Family and Relationship Issues in the 21st Century.
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Sunday, July 27, 2008
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Michael Perelman, economist at California State University
This week our guest is Michael Perelman. An economist at California State University, Chico, he has published 19 books, including The Confiscation of American Prosperity, Railroading Economics, Manufacturing Discontent, The Perverse Economy, and The Invention of Capitalism. His latest book is The Confiscation of American prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression.
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Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tom Hayden, author, teacher, and commentator
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Sunday, July 06, 2008
Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!
This week our guest is Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 700 TV and radio stations in North America. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press.
Goodman is the co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008), Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006) and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004). She writes a weekly column (also produced as an audio podcast) syndicated by King Features, for which she was recognized in 2007 with the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting.
Democracy Now! is aired Monday to Friday locally on WEFT 90.1 FM (4-5pm) and on UPTV Channel 6 (7-8am). The Democracy Now! headlines in Spanish (Titulares De Hoy) are aired on WRFU-LP 104.5FM (7:11am, 7:44am, 6:15pm) and on the Latino Radio Service 1660AM (4:30pm)
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
David Sirota, author of the New York Times best seller The Uprising
This week our guest is David Sirota. Sirota is a political journalist, New York Times bestselling author and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist living in Denver. He is a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network. He writes a weekly, nationally syndicated column for Creators Syndicate which was launched in the Fall of 2007 and which now appears in newspapers with a combined daily circulation of more than 1.6 million readers.
This is a pre-recorded show, so no calls are taken.
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason
This week our guest is Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason. Jacoby is the author of seven previous books, most recently Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, which was named a Notable Book of 2004 by the Washington Post and The Times Literary Supplement.
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
This week our guest is Jeremy Scahill. Scahill is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!
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Sunday, June 08, 2008
Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and lecturer
This week our guest is Noam Chomsky, the linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and lecturer. Chomsky is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The originator of the Theory of Generative Grammar, which revolutionized the study of linguistics, Chomsky is equally - if not more - well known for his work as a social activist and critic. His work with Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent, provides an analysis of news media coverage of international affairs, resulting in a five-filter model to explain the deficienices and shortcomings of the US news media.
Among his political writings are American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Peace in the Middle East? (1974, Profit over People (1998), and Rogue States (2000). Chomsky’s bestseller 9-11 (2002) is an analysis of the World Trade Center attack that, while denouncing the atrocity of the event, traces its origins to the actions and power of the United States, which he calls “a leading terrorist state.”
