Newsfail
Climate Change, Feminism, Gun Control, and Other Fun Stuff We Talk About Because Nobody Else Will
-
-
4.5 • 10 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A “feisty, literate, and uncompromising” (Publishers Weekly) primer on the most urgent issues of our day, from the creators and co-hosts of Citizen Radio, a listener-supported show whose slogan is “independent radio that won’t lead you to war.”
#Newsfail is definitely not your grandmother’s comedic-memoir-slash-political-manifesto. From page one (in a preface titled, “In Which the Authors Interview Ralph Nader in the Bathtub”), comedian Jamie Kilstein and journalist Allison Kilkenny pledge to give you the news like you’ve never gotten it before.
On issues ranging from feminism to gun control, climate change to class war, foreign policy to net neutrality, they tell you how the mainstream media gets it left, right, and utterly, unforgivably, irresponsibly wrong—think Noam Chomsky as channeled by Fred and Carrie from Portlandia. #Newsfail is all this, plus the story of Allison and Jamie’s own DIY foray into independent media via their podcast, Citizen Radio, which has featured guests such as Jeremy Scahill, Sarah Silverman, Glenn Greenwald, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and been downloaded millions of times by people all over the world.
In #Newsfail, they “make a strong case that a greater range of voices needs to be part of the national media discussion, including theirs” (Kirkus Reviews). Their mission is truth-telling above brainwashing. All you have to do is listen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Touting the bold message that "independent radio that won't lead you to war," comedian Kilstein and journalist Kilkenny tell the tale of their popular podcast, Citizen Radio, with equal doses of edgy humor and insight. The show's creators, inspired by the pioneering news program Democracy Now, realized their brand of censor-free, low-budget media without the influence of corporate cash would go against the commercial grain, running counter to mainstream media's focus of "sexy over substance, drama over facts." Under their mission statement of "truth-telling above brainwashing," no person or topic escapes their barbed scrutiny whether it's the "climate change denial cult," Fox News, CNN, "legitimate rape," same-sex marriage, CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Glenn Beck, the War on Drugs and legalized weed, or Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. When the authors tackle gun control and Constitutional guarantees, they argue the obvious with a wry statement of truth: "Of course you can kill people with other objects aside from guns, but the point is it's a lot more difficult to commit massacres with objects that aren't guns." Feisty, literate, and uncompromising, the work of Kilstein and Kilkenny stresses the role of a free and independent press as a powerful guardian of democracy.
Customer Reviews
Newsfail Fails
Largely disappointing, sometimes puerile analysis of what the "major" news media fails to cover or, sometimes, to even mention. The authors' chief gripes and observations are, largely, hard to argue with (politically, I'm pretty much in agreement with them) but too many of their arguments are stretched and belabored, and what might work as comedy standup routines frequently read like sophomoric diatribes. One such rant - an endless pitch for the benefits of veganism disguised as an expose of the media's failure to report on the dangers of eating meat - is self-serving, uh, tripe.