Brooke GladstoneReviews

Boring. I had to skim through a lot of it. I agree with reviewers who wondered who the audience was for this. No reason for it to be a graphic novel. The pictures added nothing, and there were way too many words, to be honest. I'm saying this as somebody who also reads a variety of things, including regular non-fiction and 1000 page fantasy epics, so it's not necessarily that I have a short attention span... It's just that I was expecting something more engaging from a graphic novel, I guess, and this was just boring. It's also by no means revolutionary, and honestly just kind of toes the mainline Democratic line pretty neatly, as far as I could tell. Maybe I'm just crazy left-leaning, I don't know. It just seemed like it was supporting the same old corrupt (sorry, they are corrupt) institutions. Definitely not a "maifesto" by any means. Yawn. Oh well.

This is the 2012 "one book one school" summer reading for incoming freshmen at Millersville University
Very thought provoking.
Could supply many opportunities for discussion in government and/or English classes

A Slim book with major implications. We should all be considering the role of reason in society today, if we really want to be engaged and understand the world in which we find ourselves. This is one where you have to really savor each idea and sentence as it comes along. I found myself rereading different passages, to really take in what she was describing, observing, and arguing for.

Brilliant look at the history of media and its relationship to audiences and government. A graphic novel to boot. Worthy of about 16 rereads.

3.5 stars?

It's my own fault for continuing to read SUPER short books when I know I'll just be frustrated by how they don't delve more deeply into their topics.

I need to stop reading them. They clearly aren't for me.

This surprised me. I was sure that I wasn't going to like it, but I did. I'm constantly ticked off by the media. Constantly. I can't watch more than five minutes of the mainstream news before a new stress twitch starts somewhere around my eyes. It's not new for me. My media "black pill" was back in the mid-80s when someone I knew was murdered and I had to read the press coverage in the NYC press. I don't completely believe anything they say unless I can verify it with at least two or three other sources.

I developed the habit of checking and rechecking events that mattered to me. With the advent of the Internet, it became so much easier to track down sources. I wasn't confined to the library to do my checking on important stuff. I had a huge resource sitting in my house. I could go to other sources, listen to multiple sides of an issue and find witnesses to an event talking directly to the public. So much better.

Gladstone essentially says the same thing. We shouldn't trust what we read or hear. We should check and double check the things that are important to us. Don't rely on Twitter for the news. Figure out what those Facebook posts really mean. And most important, don't blame the media when you misinterpret things. Headlines are not the news. Headlines sell the paper (or get the clicks). That's what they are meant to do.

So yeah! The illustrations kept this light-hearted and she had a lot of really good things to say.

Saw this slender little book on the featured table at the store and just couldn't resist it. Especially as it name-checked Philip K. Dick on the flap. Gladstone is clearly my kind of people. Which is confirmed over and over again as she quotes Le Guin, and then George Lakoff. So, basically I'm pretty much exactly her core audience.

Which is a good thing, because this little tract gives little space to identify a problem, its causes, and a possible solution. Those not already on board may find these arguments unconvincing. But for me, each page was assimilated directly into my brain, no resistance.

While I would have loved more concrete suggestions in the end, those given were entirely in keeping with the more philosophical tone of this tract. Very happy to have picked it up.

The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time is a short little book about where we are one year after Trump’s election and how we got here. Brooke Gladstone is a host on the radio program On the Media, and she looks at the elephant that is Trump’s election through her frame of reference, the media and how it helped elect Trump and what needs to be done to save the republic.

The critical issue she identifies is that we are all defining our own reality nowadays. Patrick Moynihan famously said, “You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Well, that was nice while it lasted, but in the era of FOX News, AM Radio, and Donald Trump, the idea of objective, measurable facts and reality have gone out the window into hellish postmodernism where reality is what Trump tweets–even if he changes reality twice a day.

Gladstone argues that Trump is a deliberate demagogue and she cites Arendt and many other students of authoritarianism to bolster her argument. She does not even mention the telling detail from his ex-wife that Trump kept Hitler’s “My New Order” on his bedside table the way many people keep their Bible. Accidental authoritarian, my Aunt Fanny!

The Trouble with Reality is a short, easy book with a useful reminder that it was not just Russian meddling that put Trump in the White House. People knowingly voted for an openly corrupt racist who lied to them constantly They knew he lied and liked it. Everything that should be disqualifying was a bonus because enough people just wanted to wreck everything. It’s not that Gladstone dismisses Russian hacking as immaterial, but she does not want it to distract from the homegrown threat of white nationalists and from the war on reality.

The Trouble with Reality at Workman Publishing
Brooke Gladstone on Twitter

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/9781523502387/

3.5 A few weeks back I read [book:Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History|35171984], which traced our history of gullibility far into the past. I receive The Strand non fiction book box, and this was one of the books in that box. Proved to be a complimentary read to Fantasyland, coming from a slightly different direction. Why do so many of us have trouble with reality?

A small book, with slot of big thoughts, and some relatable information. Explains how we are reluctant to let anything nor anyone interfere with our opinions or thoughts, when we are positive we are right. Explains how lies told by politicians, and he who shall remain unnamed, become our new reality. Who can we believe? Is it fake news or fact? I know I'm not the only one who wonders why this person is still allowed to tweet, when his tweets are often devastating and often cause a huge backlash. It appears his tweets may serve another diversion, this too is gone over in this book. As I said, much information is gone over in this little book. There is much more, but you should try to read this, it does provide much food for thought.

It will be easy for Trumpists and conservatives to ignore Brooke Gladstone’s new book. Not only is she a member of the mainstream media, she's spent the last 30 years working for two bastions of biased liberal media, WNYC and NPR. They’ll justify their dismissal of the book with fleeting perusals, its reviews or perhaps the subtitle. And even if they took the time to read it, they'll dislike it because it invokes writers such as Hannah Arendt and discussions of demagogues, totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Yet such a lapse is indicative of what she believes is happening today.

The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time is a succinct consideration of an era in which reality is the core of an “epic existential battle.” In assessing why this battle exists, Gladstone doesn’t lay blame entirely at the feet of Trump and his supporters (although they are assigned plenty). She builds her analysis using diverse sources, including Arendt, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, journalist Walter Lippmann, Thomas Jefferson, Philip K. Dick, Oliver Swift and 17th century poet John Milton. She believes human nature helped create our confused reality.

We mistakenly believe facts are reality, she says. Even when two people are presented with the same facts, though, they filter, arrange, prioritize and view them through their own values and traditions. Ultimately, reality “is not necessarily the world we would like it to be, … it is simply the kind of world we expect it to be.” Yet another part of the problem is that just as we sift facts, other elements of our political system affect what we sift.

As part of career spent covering the media, Gladstone has spent nearly 20 years co-hosting On The Media for years, a weekly radio program billed as examining how the "shapes our world view." In the last election, the media fell victim to what she calls Trump's "canny use of the demagogue's playbook." Using a number of Trump's campaign statements and an analyzing his use of Twitter to "embed his realities," The Trouble with Reality suggests the media's approach to an unprecedented campaign style made things worse. Gladstone argues that the Trump campaign's methods left the media "darting this way and that after shiny objects, too frantic to cull the crucial from the trivial, never pausing for the big picture that, in any case, they would not have recognized."

Yet The Trouble with Reality may reinforce the growing lack of trust in the mainstream media. Gladstone correctly notes, for example, that "reporters should have laughed less and reported more" during the campaign. Perhaps more concerning is the suggestion that Trump's hostility toward the press has created an animus that will create a new golden age of journalism. Trump's election, Gladstone says, has "blocked the appearance of objectivity at all costs" and turned Washington reporters into war reporters. Yet one of Trump's core arguments against the press is that it lacks objectivity. (Actually canceling press briefings would be a miscalculation as it would not only heighten the animus, but give “war reporters” more time to work on their marksmanship.) Perhaps it is just her phrasing that causes concern. It's crucial the media change its conspicuous tendency to accept statements at face value and fail to fact check. Yet any hint that the press is discarding objectivity has significant ramifications for media credibility.

Of course, Gladstone also sees Trump as a significant source of "our reality trouble." She seeks to explain what allowed Trump to so resonate with voters during the campaign. At the same time, the book regularly quotes and applies guidelines used to assess totalitarianism and demagoguery, suggesting Trump is both. As for what helps create reality for Trump supporters, she says he struck a "classic authoritarian deal" with them.

You can bask in my favor and recognition, in the promises I make and the license I bestow, and all I ask in return is that you believe whatever I say, whenever I say it. Even if it is false.

This certainly evinces a basis for people accepting the "fake news" and "alternative facts" motifs apparent since Trump's inauguration. It also helps explain why she suggests that the path toward repairing reality isn't agreeing on what it is.

Given that we each view identical facts from different perspectives, it is difficult, if not impossible, to agree on the truth, on reality. While Gladstone suggests that activism is a route for those so inclined, she believes gathering more facts from people and places with which we are unfamiliar is important. Even if those facts don't change our minds, it may allow us to comprehend how or what another person accepts as reality. Whether she's right or not, the suggestion is certainly better than viciously berating and maligning each other, whether publicly or online.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

This is a book about Rhetoric, which gets such short shrift these days that I don't have a shelf for it. It was an assigned text for Veronica, and I see something catching lying around, I have to snake it from other family members, otherwise they wouldn't know where to look for it. If you're unfamiliar with rhetoric, this makes a fabulous introduction, and if you already know about it, you'll enjoy how everything is tied to modern media. The graphic novel format makes it feel lighter than it would otherwise, a delightful way to slip in education. Gladstone knows whereof she writes: she's been covering media for NPR for quite a few years. Excellent.

Copy borrowed from high school text collection

This is a thoughtful look at the history of the media. It might be helpful to use in certain classrooms.

I like books that educate me. And I really like graphic novels that explain things, like Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud or the Chrome graphic novel (also by Scott McCloud), or the Feynman graphic novel.

Judged against those books, The Influencing Machine was just alright. The Influencing Machine is strongest when it talks about the history of the media, e.g. the trial of John Peter Zenger where truth became a defense against libel in the United States. The book is also especially strong when talking about the history of war in terms of news coverage and how laws in the United States changed in response to wars.

But the book founders when it attempts to address the present and future state of the media. The later chapters felt more disconnected.

Nonetheless, the book covers a great deal of material in a way that makes it more likely for facts to stick. The book also broaches a lot of important topics, like the duty of a citizen to self-inform themselves, even when it might not make that much difference to the future if a single person is well-informed or votes.

Overall, this is a quick read and I'd recommend it for anyone interested in journalism, the media, or civic responsibility. The book would be especially good for high school or college students who aren't familiar with some of the history and material that the book covers.

Excellent history of the media's role in our world and how wwe shape the information we receive from news outlets.

Several interesting essay in graphic form on media studies. There was one item I learned more about. I had been aware that many newspapers had their origins as party news. If you were a Democrat/Republican you would read a paper that often had Democrat/Republic in its name. I figured the reader did not want fair, unbalanced, objective news. The reader expected the party line on events. I learned that there papers were fairly expensive. The New York Sun was a ground breaking paper with a new model of news - only a penny versus about 6 cents for a party paper but it used advertising heavily to lower the price. This new model of paper took over the marketplace and would eventually buy out the older papers. The new model of newspaper would be independent of funding from the political party and would print almost anything to sell the goods. I recommend it as a good intro to the issues involved with news and the media.

This is a graphic non-fiction book by NPR radio host Brooke Gladstone, in which the reader is given a history of journalism in the United States, a discussion of bias and accountability and objectivity and clashes between the media, the public and those in power, and thoughts on the future of communications. It was pretty interesting. My favourite bits were the ones about people's perceptions and expectations of the media, with their attendant discussions about cognitive dissonance and other interesting psychological phenomena. Worth picking up if you're interested in the media and journalism.

It took me a while to get into the format but I did and found the book very intriguing. It is very well done and the illustrations are a good complement.

In the vein of An Illustrated History of Economics, Brooke Gladstone has put together here a rather succinct history of media and all the problems that come along with it in a graphic novel form. The illustrations are by Josh Neufeld and are expertly done in a three tone style. I was fortunate enough to attend a discussion with Gladstone where she discussed her ideas for the book and answered a number of questions from the audience. One of the themes that run throughout the book are her depictions of various biases that have been present in media since the beginning of the written word. She goes over the "goldilocks number", "the great refusal", the "commercial bias", the "status quo bias", the "visual bias" and many more. In other words, there are a lot of ways in which media is unfair. Her main point, however, is that the media has never been fair, despite the current sense that modern media is untrustworthy and unreliable. Instead, Gladstone believes that Americans need to be ever conscious of where they get their information and that they have good filters in place for receiving new input. Gladstone is ultimately a cautious optimist. She summarizes it when she says "Our limits are purely human. Our enemies are not the digital bits that dance across our screens but the neural impulses that animate our lizard brains. We get the media we deserve." In other words its possible to live in a world with ever increasing information but its up to us to make good choices. That seems reasonable to me. Has there ever been a time when more critical thinking has been a detriment to the human species?

Very patchy... I really enjoyed Gladstone's exploration of the history of journalism. The first publication of community news was written by scribes of the Egyptian pharoes, for PR purposes. Bad events could be blamed on the pharoe's enemies, and good events could be credited to his fair leadership.

Skipping ahead, the book delves into trends and biases in the media.

It's a bit disheartening that Gladstone's conclusions at the end of the book are that the public essentially has the quality journalism it deserves. If I follow her correctly, she's saying the public has the burden of demanding the sort of "Fourth Estate" journalism which speaks truth to power, and which holds our public and private institutions to account, which asks hard questions and pursues the answers doggedly. Unfortunately, when our journalists fail in this charge, it isn't always clear to the public. An easily understood lie often supplants difficult and nuanced truths.. and when it does, how is the public to know? We often don't find out (if at all) until much, much later. Sometimes, the truth is learned too late to reverse bad public decisions, like the decision to go to war in 2003. To say the public got the journalism they deserved in that circumstance strikes me as a case of "blaming the victim". Ms. Gladstone seems to be telling journalists they can be as slack, lackadaisical , and biased as they can get away with. That is the sad effect our profit-driven media has sunk to. What we need is an idealism, an allegiance to an idea of Truth and the notion of journalism as a noble calling.

Impressive take on the evolving, conflicted history-present-future of the media--and what it means to us as consumers and creators.

Graphic novel about media bias and information seeking behavior written by NPR correspondent - pretty much my ideal nonfiction book, but somehow I didn't enjoy this very much.

Perhaps because Gladstone is new to the medium, I found the book suffered greatly from a lack of narrative and structural cohesion. Her apparent thesis in the introduction - that consumers and advertisers cause media bias - did not seem to be the guiding thesis of her discussion, which spanned history, psychology, and personal opinion.

This really threw me off, and as she shared anecdotes and opinions I kept thinking, "Yes, but why are you telling me this?" Her tone was often one of refutation, but I couldn't figure out whose argument she was critiquing.

A better frame narrative would have helped. So much of nonfiction writing is telling people what you are about to tell them.

A meandering and thoughtful view on the media. Delivers many ideas very efficiently - graphic nonfiction is a very unusual method for a book, it works quite well.

A real good graphic...non-fiction...book. I found Gladstone through her On The Media podcast, and then saw that this book was highly recommended for high school libraries. I see this book working more as a reference source--yes, even in graphic form. Reading it straight through was quite a task. There is a lot of history, sociology, and, of course, media wrapped up in this short book. (Short may be a mislabel, by the way, because this book took quite a bit more time dedication than I figured it would).
The books strengths are informing the reader in the devices the media uses to inform, manipulate, and spread truth/lies. Gladstone does a good job of removing the veil and exposing that the things we've always secretly accused the media of are absolutely true. The enduring quote from this book is "We get the media we deserve".

Gladstone’s presentation is clear and balanced. Neufeld’s illustrations are a perfect match for the tone and help clarify the concepts. This book goes beyond the idea of media as newspapers, radio and TV to examine concepts like information overload and the way technology is changing how we interact with the news.