Robert W. McCasney, an influential leftist media critic who claimed that the company property was negative for American journalism and that the billionaires of the Silicon Valley who dominated the online information were a threat to democracy, died on March 25 at his house in Madison, WIS. He was 72 years old.
The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, said his wife, Ingner.
Professor Mccasney was founded on both in the academic world – he had a doctorate of research. In communications and taught in universities-e in ink journalism: he was the founder of The Rocket, a music magazine of Seattle who reviewed Nirvana’s first single.
His main thesis, expressed in more than a dozen books and dozens of articles and interviews, was that the media owned by corporate ownership were excessively compliant with the political powers that are and who limited the opinions to which the Americans were exhibited. He also argued that the promise of the Internet – of a West West market of opinions – had been rubbed by some gigantic owners of online platforms.
A first book, “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” (1999), warned that the consolidation in journalism would undermine democratic rules. In his perhaps best known work, “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is transforming Internet against democracy” (2013), rejected the utopian opinion that the digital revolution would have inaugurated an open border of information sources and reinvigorate democracy.
Instead, he showed how the Internet was devastating the business model for newspapers, supplanted the civil coverage of the local government with the lowest denominator of the Municipality Fluff: gossip of celebrities, cats of cats and personal guard.
Professor Mccasney has blamed capitalism.
“The reason for profit, commercialism, public relations, marketing and advertising – all the characteristics that define contemporary corporate capitalism – are fundamental for any evaluation of how internet has developed and it is likely that it develops”, wrote.
A non -apologetic socialist, Professor Mccasney claimed that the government should give all good Americans from $ 200 to be donated to non -profit sales points of their choice.
He made a campaign for the presidential competitions of Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders returned the favor by writing a preface to the book by Professor Mccasney “Dollarocracy: How The Money and Media Election Complex is destroying America” (2013), written with John Nichols.
In an interview with Truthout, a site of non -profit news focused on social justice, Professor McCasney attacked Mainstream’s coverage of Mr. Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary, who lost against Hillary Clinton. CNN and MSNBC, he said, were deeply distorted in favor of the “centrist” candidates who represent the status quo.
“You can only imagine how Sanders would have done if he had had a MSNBC coverage similar to what Obama received” in 2007 and 2008, said Professor McCasney.
The conservative writer David Horowitz put Professor McCasney in a list of “101 most dangerous academics in America” in 2006, including him among “role -playing radicals” who were indoctrinating American students.
On the other hand, in 2008, Utne Reader appointed Professor Mccasney one of the “50 visionaries who are changing your world”.
Professor Mccasney warned in 2016 that when the company giants dominate online information – at the time, those giants were Facebook and Google – they have too much power on what people know about the world.
“This is truly antithetical for anything remotely near a free press and a free company,” he said in an interview with the left store “Democracy Now!”
The way of dealing with these monopolies was nationalized them, he said. He suggested an acquisition of the government that would have transformed the internet giants into an almost public service, such as the post office.
Professor Mccasney was one of the founders, in 2003, of a group of public interest, free press, who opposed the corporate consolidation in the news sector and which brought a national campaign for the neutrality of the network, asking for equal access to the Internet for all content producers, from giants such as Netflix to the individual bloggers.
Robert Waterman McCasney was born on December 22, 1952 in Cleveland, one of Samuel P. Mccasney Jr., an advertising manager of this week, an union magazine inserted in the newspapers of Sunday and Edna (McCorkle) McCesney.
He grew up in the suburb of Cleveland Shaker Heights and attended Pomfret, a preparation school in the north -est of Connecticut. In 1977, he graduated from the Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash., Where he studied politics and economics.
In 1979, after working as a Sport Stringer for Upi and a publisher of The Seattle Sun, an alternative weekly, he became the publisher of the Rocket, which traced the emergence of the Seattle Gruge-rock scene in the 80s and 90s.
Intellectually restless, then he enrolled in the School of Specialization at the University of Washington, earning a PhD. In communications in 1989. For a decade, he taught in the journalistic and mass communication department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Professor Mccasney and his wife, Dr. Stole, who also has a doctorate of research. In communications, he then moved to the University of Urbana-Champigno Illinois, where he was the professor with Gutgsell in the Department of Communications.
His other books include “The last journalist please get the lights?” (2011), with Victor Pickard and “Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy” (1997).
In addition to his wife, he survived from their daughters, Amy and Lucy McCasney, and a brother, Samuel P. Mccasney III.
In a late book, “People are preparing: the fight against an economy without work and a democracy without citizens” (2016), written with Mr. Nichols, Professor McCasney claimed that artificial intelligence and digital revolution would have wiped out numerous categories of jobs.
“Capitalism as we know that it is a bad measure for the technological revolution that we are starting to experiment,” he said in an interview on the book.
“Our topic is that we currently have a democracy without citizens,” he continued. “By this we mean a system of government in which all the important decisions of the government are made to satisfy the interests and values of the richest and most powerful Americans and the companies they own”.