Robert Waterman McChesney (; born December 22, 1952) is an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

.Robert W. McChesney , Department of Communication , University of Illinois
/ref> He co-founded the Free Press, a national media reform organization. In 2002–12, he hosted ''Media Matters'', a weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on WILL (AM), Illinois Public Media radio.

Background and education

McChesney was born in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Ohio to Samuel Parker McChesney, an advertising salesman for '' This Week'' magazine, and his wife Edna Margaret "Meg" (née McCorkle) McChesney, a nurse. He attended The Evergreen State College in

Olympia, Washington Olympia is the capital of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat and largest city of Thurston County. It is southwest of the state's most populous city, Seattle, and is a cultural center of the southern Puget Sound region. Europea ...

, where he studied history and political economy.

Career

After college, McChesney worked for a time as a sports

stringer Stringer may refer to: Structural elements * Stringer (aircraft), or longeron, a strip of wood or metal to which the skin of an aircraft is fastened * Stringer (slag), an inclusion, possibly leading to a defect, in cast metal * Stringer (stairs), ...

for United Press International (UPI), and published a weekly newspaper. In 1979 he was the founding publisher of '' The Rocket'', a

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

-based rock magazine that chronicled the birth of the Seattle rock scene of the late 1980s and 1990s. He gradually began to report on the media itself and became an expert in the field, entering academic studies in this area. He did graduate work at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, obtaining a PhD in Communications there in 1989. McChesney has published several books about the media, politics and contemporary United States society. (See below). He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication of the

Assessment of the media

McChesney has said the term "

deregulated Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

media" is a misnomer. He describes media organizations as a government-sanctioned oligopoly, owned by a few highly profitable corporate entities. They have legislative influence and control news coverage, and can distort public understanding of media issues. In his article "Farewell To Journalism" (October 2012), McChesney described what he considered the deterioration of the current US media system; he said that this freefall threatens the democratic system itself. He highlights what scholars believe to be the key characteristics of healthy journalism, and says, "It is necessary...that the media system as a whole makes such journalism a realistic expectation for the citizenry." McChesney proposed a $200 annual Citizenship News Voucher to support journalism.

Bibliography

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References

External links