Robert W. McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2002, he co-founded Free Press, and served as its president until April 2008. McChesney hosts the Media Matters weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on NPR-affiliate WILL-AM. McChesney has written or edited 17 books. His most recent books are The Political Economy of Media and Communication Revolution.

With a concise history of media studies, McChesney explains why we are in the midst of a communication revolution that is at the center of twenty-first-century life. Yet this profound juncture is not well understood, in part, because our media criticism and media scholarship have not been up to the task. Why is media not at the center of political debate? Why are students of the media considered second-class scholars?
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The global media market is dominated by only a handful of major players holding more and more of the cards. Robert McChesney traces the emergence of this global media monopoly, describes what the main players are up to, and details how the Internet is being brought under their control. He discusses the dangers of this monopoly to democratic culture and reports on what people around the world are doing about it.
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Despite increasing criticism of the U.S. media, little serious discussion has emerged as to what concrete steps are needed for lasting reform. The Future of Media collects the most up-to-date thinking from the vanguard of media theorists, commentators, journalists, scholars and policymakers, who examine where we are now and lay out a five-to-10-year roadmap for change.
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Much of the U.S. media is consolidated in the hands of a few large companies, which results in journalism biased toward the corporate point of view. Robert McChesney and John Nichols argue for local control, chronicle the rise of grassroots media activism, and conclude with a proposal for meaningful improvement.
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McChesney, provides a comprehensive analysis of the economic and political powers that are being mobilized to consolidate private control of media with increasing profit — all at the expense of democracy. The Political Economy of Media makes it clear that the struggle over the ownership and the role of media is of utmost importance to everyone.
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The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known — a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. The Problem of the Media gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.
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Combining unprecedented detail on current events with historical sweep, McChesney chronicles the waves of media mergers and acquisitions in the late 1990s. He reviews the corrupt and secretive enactment of public policies surrounding the internet, digital television, and public broadcasting, and he debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to “give the people what they want.” In an eye-opening call to action, McChesney warns that we must organize politically to restructure the media if we want democracy to endure.
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