Synopses & Reviews
"Extremism in the pursuit of ratings is no vice." So runs one of the guiding tenets of modern broadcast media, and in
Hot Air, Howard Kurtz presents an eye-opening exploration of the new talk-show culture, where a sharp tongue and the ability to shock have replaced insight and substance, and where celebrity reporters and commentators have become bigger than the stories they report.
Kurtz, the award-winning media critic for the Washington Post, chronicles the rise of today's most visible media personalities, from Larry King and Ted Koppel to Don Imus and Geraldo Rivera, offering a guided tour to our new electronic democracy, in which everyone has an opinion, and everyone gets to hear about it. The result, Kurtz believes, is a cheapening of the national discourse into a witch's brew of sound bites and bile, where strange theories are spouted without fear of contradiction, accusations hurled without rebuttal and conspiracies conjured without evidence. Surprising, powerful and insightful, Hot Air reveals how talk shows are polluting the political process and, in a new afterword, Kurtz lays bare its sorry results in the 1996 presidential campaign.
Synopsis
Kurtz takes readers into the studio for an in-depth and disturbing look at the performers and pundits behind todays television and radio talk shows and at their corrosive influence on Americas social, political, and moral fabric. From Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus to Michael Kinsley and the McLaughlin Group, he guides us through our brave new electronic democracy, pointing out how the culture of celebrity has pervaded and even perverted journalism.
Synopsis
Kurtz takes readers into the studio for an in-depth and disturbing look at the performers and pundits behind todays television and radio talk shows and at their corrosive influence on Americas socia
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-405) and index.
About the Author
Howard Kurtz is media critic for the Washington Post and is a regular panelist on CNNs Reliable Sources. He is also the author of Media Circus, named the best recent book on the media by the American Journalism Review.