Does it really matter if a news outlet represents the political center, the extreme right or the liberal left? Judging from this list of titles, many published since 2000, a lot of people sure think it does. Does the media truly influence how we think and how we vote? Or do we basically hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe regardless of the “orientation” of the NY Times, Fox News, or the National Review? One thing is for sure, the issue generates a LOT of debate.

All the President’s Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth.
Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan,. S&S, 2004. [973.931092 Bush F]
Offers a critique of the authors call George Bush's manipulation of public opinion and explains why the media has failed to hold him accountable.

Attack Poodles and other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror.
James Wolcott. Miramax, 2004. [070.1 Wolcott]
Wolcott, the cultural critic for Vanity Fair and contributor to the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal, takes on everyone from Bill O’Reilly to Joe Scarborough to Bob Novak, railing against the new breed of celebrity pundits who throw journalistic objectivity to the wind and align themselves with the Republican Party and right wing.

Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media.
Michael Wolff. HarBus, 2003. [302.33 Wolff]
A media journalist analyses his own business and concludes that the once-mighty media empires are crumbling as the influence of the Internet continues to grow.

Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.
James M. Fallows. Pantheon, 1996. [302.230973 Fallows]
Fallows, Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly, shows why the media have not only lost our respect and our trust.

Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires that Control What We Read and Watch.
Richard Hack. New Millennium, 2003. [384.555 Hack]
How two rivals, controllers of much of the news and entertainment we receive every day, created an intense race for complete domination of the media.

Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity has Corrupted American Journalism.
William McGowan. Encounter, 2001. [070.48 McGowan]
Focusing on coverage of the "diversity issues" of immigration, race, gay rights, feminism and affirmative action, media critic McGowan analyzes what stories get reported and how they get reported, usually written to reinforce the politically correct ideology of writers, editors, and other assorted talking-heads.

Everything You Know is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies.
Russ Kick (ed). The Disinformation Co., 2002. [302.23 Everything]
This follow-up to You Are Being Lied To explores all those things that the friendly faces on the nightly news have “forgotten” to tell you about Mad Cow Disease, toxic waste, 9/11, the pharmaceutical industry and other topics.

The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them.
Amy Goodman, with David Goodman. Hyperion, 2004. [973.931 Goodman]
Journalist and radio host (Democracy Now!) Goodman offers a passionate and critical argument that spin, disinformation and controlled access to sources practiced by corporate honchos and politicos are seriously undermining the reliability of media reporting.

Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn’t Tell You.
Paul Waldman. Sourcebooks, 2004. [973.931 Waldman]
A political and media analyst exposes the “truth” behind the rise of George W. Bush, the ability of the Bush machine to manipulate the press.

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy.
Lewis H. Lapham. Penguin, 2004. [323.4430973 Lapham]
Warns about the stifling of the American public's opportunities for meaningful dissent at the hands of a government and media increasingly beholden only to the country's wealthy few.

Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Cam No Longer Be Trusted.
Bob Kohn. WND, 2003. [071.3 Kohn]
Attorney Bob Kohn charges that the venerable New York Times has become little more than editorial page masquerading as objective journalism employing a staff of hacks who manipulate information to further a leftist agenda.

Media Wizards: A Behind-the-Scene Look at Media Manipulations.
Catherine Gourley. 21st Century, 1999. [302.23 Gourley]
Provides examples throughout history of how the media has used the power of embellishment and imagery to manipulate the hearts and minds of the American public.

Megamedia: How Giant Corporations Dominate Mass Media, Distort Competition, and Endanger Democracy.
Dean Alger. [338.8 Alger]
Who controls the mass media? According to Alger, it is the moguls and corporate conglomerates who dominate everything from TV & radio to newspapers, books, movies, and even the Internet. The result will have a far-reaching on the so-called “freedom” of the press American hold dear.

The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson & Paul Waldman. OUP, 2003. [071.3 Jamieson]
Uses the 2000 Presidential campaign & election to set forth the premise that both the press (for failing to step into the void with the information citizens require to make sense of the political give-and-take) and the American public (for not demanding they do so) failed to fully engage the most important part of our political process.

Sensational TV: Trash or Journalism?
Nancy Day. Enslow, 1996. [791.45653 Day]
This entry in the Issue in Focus series asks some hard questions about whether the mass media, whether liberal or conservative, present an accurate representation of the news or whether it is more concerned with the sensational story.

Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right.
Ann Coulter. Crown, 2002. [320.52 Coulter]
Coulter strives to demonstrate how the liberal-controlled media is biased--and usually wrongheaded--in its attempt to demonize and belittle the right and Republicans, while rarely missing an opportunity to praise the left.

Slick Spins and Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort the News.
Caryl Rivers. Columbia UP, 1996. [302.23 Rivers]
Rivers, a Boston University journalism professor, posits that far from getting "just the facts, what passes for broadcast and print journalism is filtered through the self-interested ideologies of a small but powerful group of rich and upper-middle-class whites.

Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness—and Liberalism—to the women of American
Myrna Blyth. St. Martin’s, 2004. [302.23 Blyth]
A former editor of the Ladies Home Journal charges that the media conspire to spread a liberal message to women by characterizing women as victims, thus convincing them that, in spite of being a well-educated, affluent and healthy audience, they are really miserable (and thus need to find solace and guidance within the pages of its magazines).

Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy.
Richard L. Fox & Robert M. Van Sickel. LRP, 2001. [364.254 Fox]
How high-profile cases such as the O.F. Simpson murder trial and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial replaced newsworthy reporting with titillating tabloid journalism.

Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy.
John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney. New Press, 2005. [302.230973 Nichols]
Two media analysts and founders of the national media reform group Free Press, dissect the troubling trends in journalism that surfaced in 2004, and claim that the media's mis-coverage of the campaign decided the 2004 election and undermined the democratic process.

Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, And The Politics Of Antipoverty Policy.
Martin Gilens. University of Chicago Press, 1999. [070.4493 Gilens]
Gilens, an associate professor of political science and a fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, draws on surveys of public attitudes and analyses of more than forty years of television and newsmagazine stories on poverty, concluding that public opposition to welfare is fed by a combination of racial stereotypes and misinformation about the true nature of America's poor.

Who Deliberates?: Mass Media in Modern Democracy.
Benjamin I. Page. Univ. of Chicago, 1996. [302.23 Page]
Using three case studies of media coverage in the 1990s (how the New York Times presented a restricted set of opinions on whether to go to war with Iraq; Bush administration's claim that riots in Los Angeles were caused by welfare programs; Zoë Baird's hiring of illegal aliens), Page explores the role of the press in structuring political discussion and identifies the conditions under which media outlets become political actors and actively shape and limit the ideas and information available to the public.