On this edition of Your Call's Media Roundtable, we honor the legacy of media scholar and activist Robert McChesney, who passed away on March 25th at age 72 after a year-long fight with cancer.
Professor McChesney was a tireless champion for media democracy. Throughout his career, he advocated for publicly funded media and spoke out against corporate media consolidation. McChesney authored or edited 27 books, including Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times.
Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press says: "Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians, and activists—including mine—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities"
In The Nation, John Nichols writes: "He wanted to upend the money power and tip the balance toward systems that would empower working-class people—as opposed to billionaires—to shape the future of media: with strategies for giving citizens democracy vouchers that they could use to support independent media, and a host of other remedies."
Guests:
Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, and author of Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society
Craig Aaron, president and co-CEO of Free Press
John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, and author and co-author of many books, including It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
Resources:
The Nation: Robert McChesney, the Great Champion of Journalism and Democracy, Has Died
Free Press: Remembering Robert W. McChesney
Clean Technica: Robert McChesney’s Media Literacy Work Was Prescient — Why Didn’t More People Listen?
