[[In a wide-ranging interview, 'Wag the Dog' author Larry Beinhart describes how members of the news media censor stories – even as they publish them. ]]
In a speech this fall, Al Gore spoke of the "strangeness" in our political discourse. He bemoaned the "new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time," and the lack of desire for accountability in American journalism. On top of all this, the idea that perception is far more important than reality has become the principle of our broadcast politics, debasing our political discourse to a game of controlling the spin.
Larry Beinhart has thought long and hard about the nature of message-based politics. Beinhart, author of the bestselling novel, "Wag the Dog," recently waded into the nonfiction world of 21st-century communications with his new book "Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin."