The Media According to Gladstone

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

Brooke Gladstone

192 pages

W.W. Norton & Company

$16.95

by Nate Fisher
natefisher@ou.edu

The “media” is something we all experience in our daily lives as Americans. But what used to be called “mass media” is no longer that “mass.” That prescient topic and others are tackled by NPR reporter Brooke Gladstone in The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media.

Gladstone, currently co-host and managing editor of NPR’s On the Media program, began her career in print media as a freelancer writing on a variety of topcs before joining NPR in 1987, filling in for Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday (at his request). She eventually became senior editor of All Things Considered in 1989. After a Knight Fellowship at Stanford, she served as NPR’s Russian correspondent, then as NPR’s first media correspondent, providing reporting and insight on the media (from the media, incidentally) since 1995. She joined WNYC in 2001 as the host of the re-launched On The Media program.


Brooke Gladstone - By Rmaranthe99 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Undeniably influenced herself by these rather unique qualifications, Gladstone leads readers through the history of the press and media with the help of illustrations by Josh Neufeld in The Influencing Machine. This so-called “graphic non-fiction” is a striking way to present a plethora of information in a succinct fashion successfully. I thought the book might make a good introduction to a Mass Communication Theory course, as Gladstone touches on many topics one might cover (e.g. the “mass effects” model and the supposed dangers of the media vis-a-vis the “hypodermic needle” theory, insights into framing and agenda setting, McLuhanisms, etc.). As a regular (forced) reader of articles from academic journals, I initially found her lack of citations a bit disconcerting; however once I got to the end of the book, there they were. Hence, her professional background and the breadth of her source material leads a great deal of credibility to her views and can provide communications students and scholars with a great “kickstart” to their studies.


The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media from WW Norton on Vimeo

The main thrust of the book, however, is that the media is simply a reflection of ourselves, and hence, “we get the media we deserve.” Her discussion of the necessity of a free “marketplace of ideas” in our democracy is especially poignant. While talking to high schoolers about media coverage on the war on terror, one student asked why he should trust reporters, claiming he’d rather trust his leaders since it is their job to protect him. He questioned the need to “read stuff I can’t do anything about.” Gladstone replies in the book:

“‘We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the republic to abdicate his responsibilities.’ Actually, Edward R. Murrow said that. What I said was... ‘I know, kid. It sucks. And so much of the coverage is crap. But if you don’t inform yourself, you can’t cry about how things are going’” (p. 34).


Edward R. Murrow - via Wikimedia Commons

Gladstone says that news has really always been entertainment, invoking quotes from Chesterton and Postman. But she says that now, in our global village, more news should be relevant to us all. She leaves us with a kind of challenge, that in this era of the common citizenry being the “influencing machine,” our only limits are indeed ourselves. Where other writers such as Eli Pariser and Nicholas Carr have more negative views on the futures of our wired existence where media personalization is the norm, Gladstone sees a rosier future where the ease of political and social involvement and information acquisition leads to a greater outcome. Time will tell if she is right, and I, for one, hope she is.


Sources and References:
Gladstone, B., & Neufeld, J. (2011). The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
(n.d.) Brooke Gladstone. On The Media. Retrieved from http://www.onthemedia.org/people/brooke-gladstone/.
(n.d.) Brooke Gladstone: Co-Host and Managing Editor, On the Media. People at NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/people/2100543/brooke-gladstone.