Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

No News Is Bad News: The Death Dance of Journalism and the Twilight of Democracy
Bill Quigley
20 May 2009
🖨️ Print Article

by Robert McChesney

In this 90 minute address, Dr. Robert McChesney argues that the disappearance of journalism from newspapers and broadcast media marks the twilight of democracy.  Back in the days when Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists started their newspapers, the US Postal Service was mailing them for free.  At the time, newspapers were 90% of post office volume, and accounted for 2% of its income, a massive government subsidy.  Only a massive subsidy --- a stimulus program for journalism, and stripping corporate owners of dozens and hundreds of stations that some of them own, can begin to make real democracy possible.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Jamarl Thomas
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Death of DEI with Jamarl Thomas
    31 Jan 2025
    Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on Jamarl Thomas's YouTube podcast. She discussed her latest Black Agenda Report article on “The Death of DEI.” The issues surrounding DEI are contradictory.…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Death of DEI
    29 Jan 2025
    Black people must be discerning about racist attacks on DEI programs while also acknowledging that “diversity” can be a con that damages Black politics, just as it was meant to do.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: Note to All Nazis, Fascists and Klansmen, Langston Hughes, 1943
    29 Jan 2025
    Langston Hughes’s 1943 poem against fascism is precise, droll, and eternal.
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Why Hasn’t the UNSC Sanctioned Rwanda or Referred Its President to the ICC?
    29 Jan 2025
    The UN Security Council (UNSC) has never sanctioned Rwanda or referred its president to the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite decades of UN documentation of their international crimes in…
  • Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Dollarization in Ecuador: How the Safest Country in Latin America Became a Money Laundering Transnational Crime Hub
    29 Jan 2025
    Ecuador was once a safe country. However, U.S. interference, the rise of neoliberal economic policies, the dollarization of its currency, and enhanced state repression have combined to worsen the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us