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Progressive Movement Mourns Loss of Beloved Media Scholar Robert McChesney
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss," said Common Dreams' managing editor.
Mar 27, 2025
Robert McChesney—prominent media scholar, Free Press co-founder, dogged defender of democracy, and friend of Common Dreams—died Tuesday at the age of 72.
McChesney's many books, nearly three dozen in total which he either wrote or edited, include: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (2000); The Problem With the Media (2004); The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010, co-authored with John Nichols); Dollarocracy (2012, also with Nichols);Digital Disconnect (2013); and Digital Democracy (2014).
He was the Gutgsell endowed professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and also co-founded the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy with Dan Schiller.
"Bob McChesney was a brilliant scholar whose ideas and insights reached far beyond the classroom. He opened the eyes of a generation of academics, journalists, politicians and activists—including me—to how media structures and policies shape our broader politics and possibilities," said Free Press president and co-CEO Craig Aaron.
Free Press mourns the passing of co-founder Robert W. McChesney, a brilliant scholar & generous mentor who captured corporate media's profound influence on the health of our democracy. https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney
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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 8:08 AM
"While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public's ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people's needs and sustains democracy," Aaron continued.
"His ideas were bold and transformative, and he had little patience for tinkering around the edges," he added. "Rather than fighting over Washington's narrow vision of what was possible, he always said—and Bob loved a good sports metaphor—that we needed to throw the puck down to the other end of the ice."
A Common Dreams reader, contributor, promoter, and supporter for over 25 years, McChesney will be deeply missed by all those associated with the independent, nonprofit news organization.
"Both in my personal political development earlier in life and as a working journalist in the profession," said Common Dreams managing editor Jon Queally, "McChesney had a profound influence on how I came to understand media systems and the political economy overall."
"Rich Media, Poor Democracy pretty much changed my life, a book that I once taught to high school students—which they loved, by the way—as it explains, in an accessible but penetrating fashion, just how corrupting the news and information landscape can be when it is controlled wholesale by corporate interests," Queally continued.
"The world of media scholarship, journalists far and wide, and anyone who cares about a free press, a functioning democracy, and a better world has suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of Bob McChesney," he added. "Our hearts go out to his family and many friends."
Rutgers University communications professor Andrew Kennis also highlighted the importance of Rich Media, Poor Democracy. He told Common Dreams that McChesney—who along with Noam Chomsky wrote openers to his 2022 book Digital-Age Resistance: Journalism, Social Movements, and the Media Dependence Model—influenced his own work.
"Bob McChesney's impact on media was immeasurable," Kennis said in a phone interview. "He was a steadfast public intellectual who inspired millions with accessible critiques of capitalism and its corrosive effects on democracy. He argued that the United States' descent into neoliberalism came at the expense of popular sovereignty."
Kennis said he got to know McChesney through Chomsky, adding that "Noam called Bob 'pretty much the best political economist' in the country, and practically the world."
"Bob very much self-identified as a political economist in general, but especially about communications," he explained.
In a 2013 appearance on "Moyers & Company," hosted by Bill Moyers on PBS, McChesney joined with friend and frequent co-author Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, to discuss their book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
"Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote," McChesney explained to Moyers during the interview. "Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote the introduction to Dollarocracy. Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, called his friend McChesney a "proud socialist" who "told me how glad he was to go door to door" canvassing for Sanders when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Writing for FAIR, Cohen said that "no one did more to analyze the negative and censorial impacts of our media and information systems being controlled by giant, amoral corporations."
"Particularly enlightening was his 2014 book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy," Cohen continued, "in which McChesney explained in step-by-step detail how the internet that held so much promise for journalism and democracy was being strangled by corporate greed, and by government policy that put greed in the driver's seat."
"That was a key point for Bob in all his work: He detested the easy phrase 'media deregulation,' when in fact government policy was actively and heavily regulating the media system (and so many other systems) toward corporate control," Cohen added.
In 2015, at the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver hosted by Free Press, McChesney sat down with Common Dreams to discuss the importance of independent outlets as well as the inspiring promise of journalism that can "change the world" by exposing one person at a time to news or information they might not otherwise ever learn or come by:
Robert McChesney on Common Dreams
Nichols wrote for The Nation Thursday that while McChesney was a "globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia," he "was never satisfied working within an ivory tower."
Indeed, a lesser-known aspect of McChesney's work was his immersion in one of the late 20th century's emerging music scenes.
"One of the first things that Bob did to have an impact on society was with the grunge movement in Seattle," Kennis told Common Dreams. "That was kind of his street cred before he went full nerd."
"Bob was doing some independent journalism and was studying in Seattle and was closely covering the emergence of Nirvana and other garage bands back then; that's how he got his first big dip into journalism," he said. "And he was a big fan, and part of the fabric of indie rock."
McChesney—who studied history and political economy at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1989—co-founded the The Rocket, an alternative weekly newspaper that highlighted groups such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Sleater-Kinney, and Mudhoney as they rose to prominence. Ironically, The Rocket was sold to a big San Francisco publisher whose financial mismanagement killed the once-independent paper.
"Bob was a towering character," Kennis said, "always dedicated from the beginning to the end to the good fight."
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Adelstein and Copps: Voices at the FCC for a Free and Open Internet
Jul 26, 2008
It's unusual for federal bureaucrats to achieve rock star status, but two commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission have amassed an enthusiastic fan base among the emerging "Open Internet" movement.
For several years, Democratic Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps have stood up, spoke out and worked all the angles at the cavernous FCC in defense of an Internet that is open, neutral, accessible and affordable to everyone.
These are the bedrock principles of a growing movement of bloggers, media makers, online activists and organizers who are fighting for unfettered access to the Net.
While in the minority, Adelstein and Copps have been joined by a somewhat unlikely ally in Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. The three of them are now poised to deliver a major victory to the little guys against one of the country's biggest and most ruthless media companies.
The Making of the Movement
Adelstein and Copps' crusade on the Internet's behalf hasn't been easy.
Lining up against them in Washington is an army of hired legal guns and lobbyists working for the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. Every day, they swarm the FCC and Capitol Hill to blast away at any rule that would prevent their clients from becoming the new gatekeepers to the Web.
Who ultimately controls the Internet is a question that has galvanized millions of Internet activists in recent years.
Grassroots groups like SavetheInternet.com, Free Press (my employer), Public Knowledge, ACLU, MoveOn.org, Common Cause and Electronic Frontier Foundation see the Internet as the future of all media -at a time when more and more people are taking charge of their TV watching, music listening and other rich media experiences via a high-speed connection.
Using the Internet to Save the Internet
Millions of their supporters have used the tools of the Internet to send Washington a powerful political message: "Don't side with special interests and strip away our online freedoms."
In 2006, Capitol Hill was poised to pass a telco-friendly communications bill opposed by public advocacy groups for lacking basic consumer protections. More than 1.5 million people wrote letters to Congress, attended protest rallies across the country and organized using MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. The bill died on the Senate floor.
In 2007, the FCC was poised to hand over a valuable chunk of spectrum with no strings attached to powerful wireless companies. More than a quarter million people wrote the FCC demanding "open access" to these airwaves. The FCC attached some openness conditions before putting the spectrum out for bid.
When Verizon Wireless censored text messages by NARAL Pro-Choice America in late 2007, they sent tens of thousands of letters to Washington. Under intense public and media scrutiny, Verizon reversed its decision and let the NARAL messages through.
New Media Democracy
"Consumers don't want the Internet to become another version of old media -- dominated by a handful of companies," Adelstein told an enthusiastic audience during a FCC hearing in Pittsburgh earlier this week. "They want choice."
In June, Commissioner Copps asked a crowd at the National Conference for Media Reform: "If you want to blog about local politics, should you really have to pay some huge gatekeeper for every reader you get? Should anyone be telling you what you can read and see and hear on the Internet? Which applications you can run? Which devices you can use?"
He pledged alongside Commissioner Adelstein to "do everything we can" to ensure that the Internet looks like "real media democracy."
Adelstein and Copps' tenure in Washington has come under a Republican-led FCC, which has routinely supported industry efforts to whittle away many of the user freedoms that are fundamental to preserving the Internet's democratic character.
The agency has become embroiled in an issue called "Net Neutrality" -- the fundamental safeguard for users' ability to go where they want, do what they choose and connect with whomever they like every time they boot up the Internet.
Net Neutrality has pitted Internet rights advocates from across the political spectrum against powerful phone and cable companies, which now control broadband access for nearly 99 percent of American users. But Adelstein and Copps have broken with the well-heeled lobbyists to take a principled stand for a people-powered Internet.
Beating Back Comcast
When AT&T announced its plans to merge with BellSouth in 2006, it was the two Democrats who attached Net Neutrality as a two-year condition of the merger and then strong armed Republican members of the commission to sign off on the terms.
Now the FCC faces a new opportunity to establish Net Neutrality as the guiding principle of the Internet.
Earlier this month Chairman Martin announced that he would recommend punishing Comcast Corp. for violating Net Neutrality and blocking subscribers' Internet traffic.
While the final order hasn't come out yet, it's worthwhile to look at how we got here. The Republican Chairman should get a lot of credit for his handling of the Comcast case, including holding public hearings on the issue.
But Adelstein and Copps have walked with the public every step of the way on Net Neutrality.
Now they stand ready to join with Martin against Comcast (Their vote is expected to happen during the August 1 monthly meeting of the five commissioners). This decision would set an historic legal precedent for all those fighting to keep the Internet free of corporate gatekeepers.
"Both commissioners have really shown their mettle on this issue," blogger Matt Stoller of OpenLeft.com said during last week's Netroots Nation conference in Austin. "Copps has been a visionary and a firebrand for the netroots. Adelstein has shown bravery by breaking with the conventional wisdom of Washington for the good of everyone else."
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This Way to Better Media
Jun 12, 2008
"This way to better media," read the floor sign directing people through a skyway to the Minneapolis Convention Center. Thousands of people gathered there for the fourth National Conference for Media Reform, hosted by freepress.net. They came from all walks of life and all ages to address a central crisis in our society: our broken media system. I was one of the invited speakers.
Despite increasingly complex digital-media offerings and hundreds of channels, we see the diversity of media ownership shrinking, along with the diversity of voices that are broadcast. People are fighting back, organizing, creating alternatives and holding the corporate media giants accountable. The corporations are pushing back. With life and death, war and peace, at stake, hinging on an informed and engaged populace, the stakes have never been higher, the media never more important.
Prominent traditional journalists with decades of experience mingled with the emerging generation of new media producers. Journalist Bill Moyers, who has won more than 30 Emmys, authored four best-sellers and currently hosts the popular PBS weekly news program "Bill Moyers Journal," opened Saturday with a plenary address, saying:
"Our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders." Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is the poster child of media conglomerates. Murdoch's media empire spans the globe, with 35 TV stations in the U.S., the Fox News Channel (so-called) and many other cable channels, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, HarperCollins, 20th Century Fox movie studios and a slew of interrelated sports and entertainment properties.
Moyers' outspoken critique of the corporate media has provoked Murdoch's chief attack dog, Bill O'Reilly. Last week on his Fox show, O'Reilly said of the media reformers, "These people are crazy ... real nuts!" Josh Silver, Free Press executive director, responded: "He's a mouthpiece for the largest media corporations. And that kind of omnipotent power that these large networks have, taking control of that and taking that power back from them is what this conference is about."
As Moyers finished signing his latest book, "O'Reilly Factor" producer Porter Berry and his camera crew pounced. Dan Rather was at the conference but eluded the Fox stakeout. Moyers turned the Fox ambush back on Berry:
Moyers: "Rupert Murdoch said the best thing that will come out of the Iraq war will be [oil] at $20 a barrel. Now, today, when I came here, I looked, and it was $130-something. When is Rupert going to explain why the war didn't give us $20-a-barrel oil?"
Making the link between media conglomerates and militarism, Moyers questioned Berry further about Murdoch:
Moyers: "Does Bill O'Reilly work for Rupert Murdoch?"
Berry: "He works for Fox News."
Moyers: "But who owns Fox News?"
Berry: "News Corp. ..."
Moyers: "Rupert Murdoch is the boss."
Indymedia videographers crowded around the two, and the video clips soon found their way onto the Internet. O'Reilly ran a heavily edited clip of the exchange, with none of the above included, but had a "body-language expert" on his show, attempting to smear Moyers. The fact that Murdoch producers were at the conference trying to discredit prominent participants demonstrates the need for honest, strong, countervailing media outlets.
Sen. Byron Dorgan also addressed the conference. On Monday, he and Sens. John Kerry, Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg introduced a bill that would end Pentagon use of funds to spread propaganda and charged both the Pentagon inspector general and Congress' Government Accountability Office to investigate allegations that retired generals were used to push for war with Iraq.
Elected officials will not solve our media crisis alone. The grass-roots movement for media reform is growing, and with mass layoffs in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms, critical elections, burgeoning military budgets and multiple wars and occupations, and with emergent and accessible digital-media tools and networks increasingly available to most people, there is no better time to join it.
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