The Creation of the Media: The Political Origins of Modern Communication

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this sweeping history, Paul Starr shows how politics created our media world, from the emergence of the first newspapers and postal systems in early modern Europe and colonial America to the rise of the mass press, telecommunications, motion pictures, and broadcasting in the twentieth century. Critical choices about freedom of expression, ownership of media, the architecture of networks, secrecy, privacy, and intellectual property have made the modern media as much a political as a technological invention.

The American Revolution, Starr argues, set the United States off on a path of development in communications that diverged sharply from patterns in Europe. By the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in postal service, newspapers, and popular journalism, then in development of telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass media and entertainment. The rise of the media has become the story of an American ascendancy-and an American dilemma. The framework of communications established in the United States has proved to be a source of economic growth, cultural influence, and even military advantage for the country. But the media have also become a constellation of power in their own right, upsetting the classical vision of the role of the press in a democracy. The Creation of the Media not only presents the media in a new way; it also puts American politics into a new perspective.

Author Biography: Paul Starr is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and co-editor of The American Prospect. His book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

SYNOPSIS

Pulitzer Prize winner Starr (sociology, Princeton U.) begins in 1600 with the diffusion of print and the public sphere it opened in its wake. Then he looks at the rise of technological networks—telephone, cable, wireless—from 1840 to 1930. Finally, he describes modern media from 1865 to 1941, which he characterizes as a political and commercial rather than technological process. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

James Fallows - The New York Times

The Creation of the Media is so thick with detail and careful in nuance that it is completely convincing as a work of scholarship. In this it resembles Starr's celebrated Social Transformation of American Medicine, published over 20 years ago. But more than that book, this one can also be read as instrumental history -- a version of the past with clear operational implications for the future.

Publishers Weekly

In this engrossing, panoramic history of the development of American media, Pulitzer winner Starr (The Social Transformation of American Medicine) ranges from our nation's founding, when the Constitution made the postal service the one nationalized industry and the Bill of Rights denied the federal government any role in regulating the press, to the eve of WWII, when commercial radio broadcasting flourished under very different cultural, political and economic conditions. Throughout, Starr shows that our country's original impulse to promote the postal service and press as part of its vision of nation building established a pattern of support for an open, continent-wide market that would assume different forms and policies as new waves of media were introduced. Starr brilliantly argues, however, that the government preference for keeping things decentralized was finally challenged by the advent of the telegraph, as its technology and associated economies of scale centralized the communications industry. Confronting thorny new issues of monopoly and threats to the guaranteed rights of free expression and individual privacy, the country then had no choice but to take on a regulatory role. Starr vividly demonstrates how complicated that role became with media like motion pictures and broadcasting, as the nation experienced immigration, urbanization and major cultural shifts: suddenly, counter forces in favor of moral regulation were petitioning the government to use all of its power to restrain mass media. The culture wars had begun. Agent, Bill Leigh. (Apr. 15) Forecast: The striking parallels in Starr's sweeping and authoritative study to such current hot topics as the USA Patriot Act, FCC licensing procedures and the media role in political campaigns should draw the attention of serious readers. An author tour, national ad campaign and NPR coverage could expand interest further. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Since Colonial times, political forces and institutions have had a profound influence on the development of U.S. communication systems. Starr (sociology, Princeton), whose Social Transformation of American Medicine won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1984, once again demonstrates his ability to treat a complex subject thoroughly yet succinctly. For each medium discussed, from newspapers through television, he explains how the political and social climate determined the choices made. He frequently compares the U.S. and European approaches to media development; the U.S. tendency has been toward decentralization and privatization, while European governments have sought to concentrate media control in a central agency. The book's title doesn't disclose this strictly Western focus. However, as Starr points out, "the American model of privately owned, competitively driven communications" has influenced the development of media throughout the world. Starr's survey stops before the end of World War II, but he makes a strong case that political choices continue to play a major role in media development. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Susan M. Colowick, Timberland Regional Lib., Tumwater, WA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews