Beyond the Left The Communist Critique of the Media
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Beyond the Left The Communist Critique of the Media by Stephen Harper
The ideological distortions of the conservative media, from Fox News to the Daily Mail, are widely acknowledged and often denounced among contemporary critics and commentators. But what if The Guardian newspaper and BBC news, in fact, constitute the most insidious forms of capitalist propaganda? In a wide-ranging and erudite polemic, Beyond the Left analyses capitalist news and current affairs media from a radical perspective. The book rejects the liberal and pluralist paradigms that often underpin critiques of the media, showing how media texts reflect and reinforce the material interests of the ruling class and arguing that the principal ideological menace today is posed not by the right wing, but by the left-liberal media, as it co-opts and obscures radical political positions and reinforces a range of mystifications, from anti-fascism and 'humanitarian war' to 'green politics'. Drawing on the work of radical media critics as well as the writings of revolutionary communist groups and considering the recent reporting of war, industrial action, immigration and the environment, Beyond the Left updates and recharges the Marxist critique of the media.
In an accessible and robust polemic Harper shows why we must go beyond the left and embrace a communist critique of both the capitalist media's news agenda which disempowers and disinforms and the un-reformable system that shapes its ideological universe - the capitalist system itselfIn this sense Harper's book is vulgar, unrealistic and deeply unfashionable: it is in short essential reading in an increasingly insane world. (Mike Wayne, Professor of Screen Studies, Brunel University) Stephen Harper cuts through mystifying accounts of the media with a steady hand, placing a real left politics firmly at the centre of any productive understanding of the daily circulation of casual idiocies and pernicious ideologies. (Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Roehampton University)
Stephen Harper is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Portsmouth University, UK.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781846949760 |
| ISBN 10 | 1846949769 |
| Title | Beyond the Left The Communist Critique of the Media |
| Author | Stephen Harper |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Collective Ink |
| Year published | 2012-01-27 |
| Number of pages | 122 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |