Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy

by Claire Bond Potter

Overview

A wide-ranging history of seventy years of change in political media, and how it transformed — and fractured — American politics


With fake news on Facebook, trolls on Twitter, and viral outrage everywhere, it's easy to believe that the internet changed politics entirely. In Political Junkies, historian Claire Bond Potter shows otherwise, revealing the roots of today's dysfunction by situating online politics in a longer history of alternative political media.


From independent newsletters in the 1950s to talk radio in the 1970s to cable television in the 1980s, pioneers on the left and right developed alternative media outlets that made politics more popular, and ultimately, more partisan. When campaign operatives took up e-mail, blogging, and social media, they only supercharged these trends. At a time when political engagement has never been greater and trust has never been lower, Political Junkies is essential reading for understanding how we got here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541644991
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,162,070
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Claire Bond Potter is a political historian at the New School for Social Research. She is executive editor of Public Seminar and was the author of the popular blog Tenured Radical from 2006 through 2015. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Press Pass 1

Chapter 1 The Political Newsletter 21

Chapter 2 Public Broadcasting 43

Chapter 3 Creating Partisans 65

Chapter 4 Electronic Democracy 87

Chapter 5 Scandal 109

Chapter 6 Netroots 131

Chapter 7 Blogging the News 157

Chapter 8 MyBarackObama 179

Chapter 9 Tea Party Time 199

Chapter 10 White House 2.0 223

Chapter 11 Hashtag Populisms 245

Chapter 12 Democalypse Now 265

Conclusion: Post-Truth 287

Acknowledgments 301

Notes 303

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2020

New School history professor Potter debuts with an illuminating rundown of historical trends in political journalism, from New Deal–era consensus building to today’s super-partisan echo chambers. During the Eisenhower administration, Potter writes, progressive journals such as I.F. Stone’s Weekly offered an insider’s perspective not found on major TV networks and in daily newspapers. Though McCarthyism purged “the left establishment” of many prominent voices, by the mid-1970s, Stone and rival “right-wing stars” such as radio broadcaster Carl McIntyre had given rise to a highly invested readership for both liberal and conservative publications, and a viewership for TV programs such as the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Hooked on politics by the Watergate hearings, advances in polling technology, and the rise of cable news, “political junkies” (a termed coined by Hunter S. Thompson) were increasingly drawn to progressive and conservative populist outlets in the 1980s and 1990s, including the online news aggregator Drudge Report, which broke the story of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. Donald Trump’s 2016 election, Potter contends, can be attributed to his comfort with the “hyper-partisan populist atmosphere that digital alternative media promoted.” Potter’s brisk and well-informed account suggests that alternative media, by refocusing on truth-seeking and informed debate, can help solve many of the threats to American democracy that it has produced. Newshounds on both the right and the left will be encouraged. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Potter's brisk and well informed account suggests that alternative media, by refocusing on truth seeking and informed debate, can help solve many of the threats to American democracy that it has produced. Newshounds on both the right and the left will be encouraged"—Publishers Weekly

"I'm a political junkie, and if you're reading this, you probably are too. Which means you're going to want to grab Claire Potter's new book and dive in. This vivid, lively narrative shows us how the rise of political populism and the emergence of alternative media have gone hand in hand. Spotlighting the operatives you haven't heard of, the innovations you didn't know about, and the stories you haven't heard, Potter reveals the history that happened when we were looking the other way. The gatekeepers have fallen, the barbarians are inside the city, and Political Junkies — with insight, fresh detail, and delicious wit — makes sense of how it all happened."—David Greenberg, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency

"Do you follow political news obsessively? Do you tweet about it even more obsessively still, compulsively dismissing and disbelieving all information that doesn't fit your ideological lens? You might be a political junkie! You're not alone. In this incisive, clear-headed book, Claire Potter diagnoses the condition ailing so many of us, and persuasively argues that it's bad for democracy. Political Junkies is wise, open-minded, and bracing."—Liza Featherstone, author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

"In her lively new book, Claire Potter tackles a topic too many historians ignore — the central role media play in shaping our political lives. From the political newsletters of the 1950s to cables news in the 1980s to the social-media revolution of the 2000s, Potter maps the ways alternative media remade our politics, broke our democracy, and gave birth to a new kind of American: the political junkie."—Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politic

"To understand 21st-century populism, we need to know the media that helped to create it. Claire Potter's Political Junkies tells that story — sometimes glorious, sometimes dismal, but always fascinating and well worth the read."—Beverly Gage, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror

From the Publisher