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In Defense of Media and Democracy: The Inspiring Work and Life of My Friend Robert W. McChesney
Just like Tom Paine, and until the very end, Bob saw hope in the people who were rising up and demanding a future defined by their humanity, as opposed to corporate power.
Mar 28, 2025
Bob McChesney, who died on Tuesday at the age of 72, first introduced himself to me almost 30 years ago, on the set of a public television news program in Madison, Wisconsin. Bob was a distinguished University of Wisconsin professor who was gaining an international reputation for his groundbreaking analysis of the threat to democracy posed by corporate control of media. Raising his arguments in books, speeches, and frequent C-Span appearances, he was well on his way to becoming one of the great public intellectuals of his time. I was a young newspaper editor who had earned a slim measure of recognition for my advocacy on behalf of investigative journalism and press freedom.
The program was framed as a debate about the future of journalism. Bob was positioned as the doomsayer, warning about how media consolidation was killing journalism. I was expected to counter that the future was actually bright. As it turned out, neither of us wanted to follow the script. Instead of arguing, we both agreed that profit-obsessed corporations were destroying American journalism, and that this destruction would pose an ever more serious threat to American democracy.
It wasn’t a particularly satisfying exchange for our hosts that evening, but it was the beginning of a collaboration that would span three decades. Bob and I cowrote half a dozen books and dozens of articles, joined Bill Moyers for a series of PBS interviews that would examine threats to journalism and democracy, and did our best, with more allies than we could have imagined in those early days, to stir up a reform movement that recognized the crisis and endeavored to set the stage for media that serves people rather than corporate bottom lines.
Bob, with his remarkable intellect and even more remarkable capacity for communicating his vision of a media that served citizens rather than corporations, was always the driving force. His research and his insatiable curiosity helped him to see the future more clearly than any scholar of his generation, with such precision that Moyers would compare him to both Tom Paine and Paul Revere. As new political and societal challenges arose in an ever more chaotic moment for America and the world, Bob explained how they should be understood as fresh manifestations of an ancient danger: the concentration of power—in this case, the power of the media, in the hands of old-media CEOs and new tech oligarchs, all of whom cared more about commercial and entertainment strategies than democratic and social values.
Bob, with his remarkable intellect and even more remarkable capacity for communicating his vision of a media that served citizens rather than corporations, was always the driving force.
Bob took the “public” part of “public intellectual” seriously. You knew he wanted to swing into action when he’d say, “We need to put our heads together…” That was his call to write another book, organize another national conference on media reform, or rally another movement to defend the speak-truth-to-power journalism that the founders of the American experiment understood as the only sure footing for representative democracy.
Bob kept issuing the call, even as a series of health challenges slowed him down. He was still doing so a few days before his death following a year-long fight with cancer. His was a life fulfilled in the best sense of the word. He died a happy man, holding the hand of his beloved wife, Inger Stole, and reflecting on time spent with his daughters, Amy and Lucy.
Our last conversations recalled friends and colleagues who had answered his calls to save journalism and renew our democracy: Craig Aaron, Victor Pickard, Josh Silver, Kimberly Longey, Russell Newman, Derek Turner, Ben Scott, Joe Torres, Tim Karr, Matt Wood, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Michael Copps, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and too many others to name. Bob loved scholarship, loved activism, and loved collaborating with people who made connections between the two—sharing writing credits with former students at UW-Madison and later at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working with unions of media workers and, perhaps above all, strategizing with the team at Free Press, the media reform group he co-founded in 2003 to advocate for diversity in ownership, robust pubic media, net neutrality and always, always, democracy. Bob was frustrated by the oligarchical overreach now on display in the Washington of Donald Trump and Elon Musk—a development he had predicted with eerie accuracy. Yet he remained undaunted to the end, still spinning out fresh ideas for upending corporate control of media, getting Big Money out of politics, and ushering in a new era of freewheeling debate and popular democracy.
That was the essence of Robert Waterman McChesney. He was a globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia, yet he was never satisfied working within an ivory tower. He was a rigorous researcher into the worst abuse of corporate and political establishments. Yet he refused to surrender his faith in the ability of people-powered movements to upend monarchs and oligarchs and, in the words of Tom Paine, “begin the world over again.”
Bob regarded Paine—the immigrant pamphleteer who rallied the people of his adopted country to dismiss King George III and the colonial enterprise, and who spent the rest of his life demanding that this new United States live up to the egalitarian promise of liberty and justice for all—as the essential founder of the American project. Like Paine, Bob believed that with information and encouragement, grassroots activists could carry Paine’s legacy forward into the 21st century. Countless people heeded his call.
“Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians, and activists—including mine—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities,” explained Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press. “While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public’s ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people’s needs and sustains democracy. His ideas were bold and transformative, and he had little patience for tinkering around the edges. Rather than fighting over Washington’s narrow vision of what was possible, he always said—and Bob loved a good sports metaphor—that we needed to throw the puck down to the other end of the ice.”
Bob examined the relationship between media and democracy with scholarly seriousness. Yet he coupled that seriousness with a penchant not just for sports metaphors and references to rock-and-roll songs but spot-on cinematic analogies, which invited Americans to recognize the crisis. Speaking to Moyers about how America’s media policies were forged behind closed doors in Washington, by lobbyists and politicians, Bob succintly defined that process: “Pure corruption. This is really where Big Money crowds everything else out. The way to understand how policymakers make media in this country [is to watch] a great movie: The Godfather: Part II. There’s a scene early in the movie where all the American gangsters are on top of a hotel roof in Havana. It’s a classic scene featuring Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone. They’ve got a cake being wheeled out to them. And Hyman Roth is cutting up slices of the cake. The cake’s got the outline of Cuba on it, and they’re giving each gangster a slice of Cuba. And while he’s doing this, Hyman Roth’s [talking about how they can work with government to carve up Cuba in ways that make them all rich]. That’s how media policy is made in the United States.”
The accessibility of his speech—the way it turned something as potentially obscure as communications policy into a readily understandable issue—was Bob’s genius. He wanted to upend the money power and tip the balance toward systems that would empower working-class people—as opposed to billionaires—to shape the future of media: with strategies for giving citizens democracy vouchers that they could use to support independent media, and a host of other remedies. Like his friend Bernie Sanders, Bob believed it essential to have a media free enough from corporate influence to speak truth to economic and political power, boldly critique the excesses of capitalism, and raise the alarm against creeping oligarchy.
The accessibility of his speech—the way it turned something as potentially obscure as communications policy into a readily understandable issue—was Bob’s genius.
This was the premise that underpinned an academic career that saw Bob author or co-author almost 30 books—including the groundbreaking Rich Media, Poor Democracy, his 1999 manifesto on how the decay of journalism would lead to a collapse of democratic norms, and 2013’s Digital Disconnect, his essential assessment of the danger of allowing Silicon Valley billionaires to define online communications. Many of the same themes ran through examinations of the shuttering of newspapers by corporate conglomerates that left communities as news deserts, of the destructive influence of political advertising on the national discourse, and of the failure of political and media elites to bring citizens into debates about automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Noam Chomsky, whose own work on the media’s manufacturing of consent had profoundly influenced Bob’s scholarship (along with that of Ben Bagdikian, the journalist who wrote The Media Democracy), became Bob’s most ardent champion. “Robert McChesney’s work has been of extraordinary importance,” explained Chomsky. “It should be read with care and concern by people who care about freedom and basic rights.”
Bob’s research—and the books, lectures and activism that extended from it—earned him Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize, the Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, the Newspaper Guild’s Herbert Block Freedom Award (for “having done more for press freedom than anyone”), and the International Communications Association’s C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy. It also gained him a hearing from thoughtful members of Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. Even if they did not always follow his advice, progressive officials recognized the wisdom of his analysis and incorporated it into their work. That’s one of the reasons why, in 2009, Utne Reader named Bob as one of “50 visionaries who are changing your world.” Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, simply referred to Bob as “the conscience of the media in America.”
Bob’s last words to me, though they were a bit more labored due to his illness, were a repeat of his constant call to action: “Let’s put our heads together…”
Lewis wrote those words the better part of two decades ago. Bob remained that conscience, even as “media deserts” spread their arid path across America, as disinformation and misinformation overwhelmed the Internet, as propagandistic advertising warped our politics and as democratic expectations were undermined. It was all as he had predicted. But he was not inclined toward “I told you so” rejoinders.
Rather, Bob kept the faith that popular movements would push back against the decay, and the chaos, just as they had in the Progressive Era, the New Deal years, and the 1960s. “You’ve got to look in the mirror and understand that, if you act like change for the better is impossible, you guarantee it will be impossible,” he would say. “That’s the one decision each individual faces.”
Bob looked in that mirror confidently and courageously throughout a life of scholarship and activism. Some of our last conversations were about the huge crowds Bernie Sanders was attracting for his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, and the thousands of Americans who have been showing up to challenge Republican members of Congress at town hall meetings. Just like Tom Paine, Bob saw fresh hope in the people who were rising up and demanding a future defined by their humanity, as opposed to corporate power. This might, he suggested, be the opening for a new surge in activism for journalism and democracy, a surge that might “begin the world over again.”
Bob’s last words to me, though they were a bit more labored due to his illness, were a repeat of his constant call to action: “Let’s put our heads together…” In other words, let’s make a plan. Let’s do something. That was his charge to those of us who cherished Bob McChesney’s mission and his spirit. We honor him best by accepting it.
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Progressive Movement Mourns Loss of Beloved Media Scholar Robert McChesney
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss," said Common Dreams' managing editor.
Mar 27, 2025
Robert McChesney—prominent media scholar, Free Press co-founder, dogged defender of democracy, and friend of Common Dreams—died Tuesday at the age of 72.
McChesney's many books, nearly three dozen in total which he either wrote or edited, include: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (2000); The Problem With the Media (2004); The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010, co-authored with John Nichols); Dollarocracy (2012, also with Nichols);Digital Disconnect (2013); and Digital Democracy (2014).
He was the Gutgsell endowed professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and also co-founded the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy with Dan Schiller.
"Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians and activists—including me—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities," said Free Press president and co-CEO Craig Aaron.
Free Press mourns the passing of co-founder Robert W. McChesney, a brilliant scholar & generous mentor who captured corporate media's profound influence on the health of our democracy. https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney
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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 8:08 AM
"While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public's ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people's needs and sustains democracy," Aaron continued.
"His ideas were bold and transformative, and he had little patience for tinkering around the edges," he added. "Rather than fighting over Washington's narrow vision of what was possible, he always said—and Bob loved a good sports metaphor—that we needed to throw the puck down to the other end of the ice."
A Common Dreams reader, contributor, promoter, and supporter for over 25 years, McChesney will be deeply missed by all those associated with the independent, nonprofit news organization.
"Both in my personal political development earlier in life and as a working journalist in the profession," said Common Dreams managing editor Jon Queally, "McChesney had a profound influence on how I came to understand media systems and the political economy overall."
"Rich Media, Poor Democracy pretty much changed my life, a book that I once taught to high school students—which they loved, by the way—as it explains, in an accessible but penetrating fashion, just how corrupting the news and information landscape can be when it is controlled wholesale by corporate interests," Queally continued.
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of Bob McChesney," he added. "Our hearts go out to his family and many friends."
Rutgers University communications professor Andrew Kennis also highlighted the importance of Rich Media, Poor Democracy. He told Common Dreams that McChesney—who along with Noam Chomsky wrote openers to his 2022 book Digital-Age Resistance: Journalism, Social Movements, and the Media Dependence Model—influenced his own work.
"Bob McChesney's impact on media was immeasurable," Kennis said in a phone interview. "He was a steadfast public intellectual who inspired millions with accessible critiques of capitalism and its corrosive effects on democracy. He argued that the United States' descent into neoliberalism came at the expense of popular sovereignty."
Kennis said he got to know McChesney through Chomsky, adding that "Noam called Bob 'pretty much the best political economist' in the country, and practically the world."
"Bob very much self-identified as a political economist in general, but especially about communications," he explained.
In a 2013 appearance on "Moyers & Company," hosted by Bill Moyers on PBS, McChesney joined with friend and frequent co-author Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, to discuss their book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
"Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote," McChesney explained to Moyers during the interview. "Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote the introduction to Dollarocracy. Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, called his friend McChesney a "proud socialist" who "told me how glad he was to go door to door" canvassing for Sanders when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Writing for FAIR, Cohen said that "no one did more to analyze the negative and censorial impacts of our media and information systems being controlled by giant, amoral corporations."
"Particularly enlightening was his 2014 book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy," Cohen continued, "in which McChesney explained in step-by-step detail how the internet that held so much promise for journalism and democracy was being strangled by corporate greed, and by government policy that put greed in the driver's seat."
"That was a key point for Bob in all his work: He detested the easy phrase 'media deregulation,' when in fact government policy was actively and heavily regulating the media system (and so many other systems) toward corporate control," Cohen added.
In 2015, at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver hosted by Free Press, McChesney sat down with Common Dreams to discuss the importance of independent outlets as well as the inspiring promise of journalism that can "change the world" by exposing one person at a time to news or information they might not otherwise ever learn or come by:
Robert McChesney on Common Dreams
Nichols wrote for The Nation Thursday that while McChesney was a "globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia," he "was never satisfied working within an ivory tower."
Indeed, a lesser-known aspect of McChesney's work was his immersion in one of the late 20th century's emerging music scenes.
"One of the first things that Bob did to have an impact on society was with the grunge movement in Seattle," Kennis told Common Dreams. "That was kind of his street cred before he went full nerd."
"Bob was doing some independent journalism and was studying in Seattle and was closely covering the emergence of Nirvana and other garage bands back then; that's how he got his first big dip into journalism," he said. "And he was a big fan, and part of the fabric of indie rock."
McChesney—who studied history and political economy at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1989—co-founded the The Rocket, an alternative weekly newspaper that highlighted groups such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Sleater-Kinney, and Mudhoney as they rose to prominence. Ironically, The Rocket was sold to a big San Francisco publisher whose financial mismanagement killed the once-independent paper.
"Bob was a towering character," Kennis said, "always dedicated from the beginning to the end to the good fight."
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Free Press Defenders Rip Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'Bullsh*t' Attack on Public Broadcasters
"Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to defund Sesame Street and dismantle PBS and NPR," said one Democratic congressman. "Not on our watch. Fire Elon Musk, and save Elmo."
Mar 26, 2025
Progressives roundly ridiculed U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday after the serial conspiracy theorist made baseless claims that National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service are "radical left-wing echo chambers" with a "communist agenda" and called for their defunding.
"Is Elmo now, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party?"
Greene (R-Ga.)—who chairs the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency (DOGE, but not part of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency)—convened the hearing, titled "Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable," to examine alleged "biased news" and whether American taxpayers "will continue funding these leftist media outlets."
"After listening to what we've heard today, we will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," the congresswoman told
NPR CEO Katherine Maher and the PBS CEO Paula Kerger during her closing remarks, referring to the nonprofit that helps fund PBS and NPR.
"Here's how it works: In America, every single day—every single day—private businesses operate on their own, without government funding," she added. "We believe you all can hate us on your own dime."
PBS gets about 16% of its funding from federal sources. For NPR, the figure is around just 1%.
Greene—who has amplified conspiracy theories including QAnon, Pizzagate, the 9/11 "hoax," government involvement in mass shootings, "Jewish space lasers" causing wildfires, the U.S. government controlling the weather, and the "stolen" 2020 presidential election—made more blatantly false claims during Wednesday's hearing, including that PBS used "taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical left positions like featuring a drag queen" on one of its children's programs. This never happened.
Nevertheless, Greene used props including a blown-up photo of drag queen Lil' Miss Hot Mess, a children's book author and Drag Queen Story Hour board member, whom the congresswoman called a "monster," while baselessly accusing Maher and Kerger of "grooming and sexualizing" children.
Another Republican member of the panel, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky, appeared to not understand the difference between an editorial—an opinion article—and the the work and standards of media editors:
oh my god -- Comer thinks "editorial standards" literally refers to standards for editorials and is corrected by the NPR head
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— Aaron Rupar ( @atrupar.com) March 26, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Democrats on the DOGE subcommittee pushed back against the attacks by Greene and other Republicans on the panel. Mocking Greene's assertion that PBS and NPR have a "communist agenda" and referring to one of the most beloved characters on the long-running children's show Sesame Street, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) asked Kerger a McCarthyesque question: "Is Elmo now, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party? A yes or no."
Kerger answered "no," prompting Garcia to retort: "Now, are you sure, Ms. Kerger? Because he's obviously red... He also has a very dangerous message about sharing. And helping each other; he's indoctrinating our kids that sharing is caring. Now maybe he's part of a major socialist plot and maybe that's why the chairwoman is having this hearing today."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) responded to a false assertion by hearing guest Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation—the main force behind Project 2025, the plan for a far-right overhaul of the federal government that includes defunding public broadcasters—as well Musk's glaring conflicts of interest by referring to a popular porcine protagonist of Muppets fame.
"To your knowledge, has Miss Piggy ever been caught trying to funnel billions of dollars in government contracts to herself and to her companies?" Casar said.
At the end of his remarks, the progressive lawmaker implored Greene to "leave Elmo alone" and instead bring in Musk, the de facto head of the other DOGE, for questioning. Musk, the world's richest person, and President Donald Trump support defunding public broadcasters.
In typically fiery fashion, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) told Greene and Republicans that "free speech is not about what y'all want somebody to say, and the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit!"
Tim Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at the media reform group Free Press, told Common Dreams after the hearing that Greene's "bogus attack against public media is a blatant attempt to further weaken the sort of journalism that questions the corruption and cruelty of the Trump administration."
"This is not about saving taxpayer dollars or based on any genuine concern about whether there's too much bias on public media. It's a blatant attempt to undermine independent, rigorous reporting on the Trump administration," Karr argued.
"Greene may not like public media—and that's no surprise given that she's no fan of journalism that holds public officials and billionaires accountable," he continued. "But she and her Republican colleagues are far out of step with the American people and their needs. Communities all across the country rely on their local public radio and TV stations to provide trustworthy news reporting and a diversity of opinions."
"In every survey, the American public indicates it wants more support for public and community media, not less," Karr added. "Unfortunately, President Trump and his cronies in Congress have instead tried to zero out funding for public media. They have repeatedly failed because millions of viewers and listeners oppose them and instead believe that support for public media is taxpayer money well spent."
On Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders sent a joint letter urging Greene's committee "to approach its examination of public broadcasting with the understanding that press freedom is not a partisan issue, rather a vital part of American democracy."
The attack on @pbs.org and @npr.org is an attack on journalism. The administration is just going after them first because public funding makes them the low-hanging fruit. We're proud to partner on this letter with CPJ and @rsf.org. cpj.org/2025/03/cpj-...
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— Freedom of the Press Foundation ( @freedom.press) March 25, 2025 at 9:07 AM
"The tone and conduct of the proceedings matter," the groups' letter asserts. "The American public deserves access to quality, independent journalism, regardless of geography, income, creed, or political views. Public broadcasting delivers on this vital need by providing high-quality, fact-based reporting to the American public, including underserved communities across the nation."
"Congressional scrutiny of public broadcasting must not undermine the ability of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal," the groups stressed. "Otherwise, a dangerous precedent will be set that could further erode trust in the media and undermine press freedom more broadly."
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union is sharing a petition telling Congress to protect public broadcasting.
"Republican leaders in Congress and the Trump administration are following the Project 2025 playbook and trying to shut down funding for independent public television and radio stations," the petition states. "Many CWA members work at these locally owned stations and play a crucial role in keeping our communities informed. Without public television and radio stations, we will lose access to critical local news and programming."
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