Juan Gonzalez
An interview with Juan Gonzalez, co-host of Democracy Now, will air on PBS – Channel 5, Sunday at 7:30 a.m. The half-hour interview will be on the station’s Report from Santa Fe.
Gonzalez is the founder of the National Association for Hispanic Journalists and author of three books. His most recent published work is “News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.”
Here’s an excerpt from the interview, provided by SPJ-Rio Grande member Betsy Model.
Gonzalez: “So we decided to go back to the very beginning of the press in America and then to try and trace how it had developed. We discovered two things: one, that the government involvement in determining how our media system will develop has been far greater than anyone realizes. And two: the government usually had to respond to advances in technology in mass communications so that every time a new technology comes on the scene, it disrupts the existing order of the media and forces the media system to adjust or die. And then the government steps in with new rules to determine how news and information will flow to the people. So this happened early on when the government established the post office, which was really our first internet in America.”
“You have this contradiction that we have more media in this country than any people in the history of the world, yet the American public is so remarkably misinformed and disinformed about the events that are occurring in the world around them. But that is the problem of a commercial media system that got so divorced from the public that now people are turning away from it, and hoping that the internet will provide an alternative media (which) will provide a new beginning for journalism in America.”
