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Eric Alterman, Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics (Cornell University Press, 1992) Reissued in paperback by Harperperennial in 1993 (see info. below on second edition) Right-wing politicos loathe him and leftists hail him as a truth-teller, but either way, Eric Alterman catapulted himself into media criticism with Sound and Fury, his 1992 book about the evolution of the pundit. Alterman coined "punditocracy" to describe the cadre of insider, elite commentators who exert undue control over national politics and elected officials. He uses the word with the disdain of a man who has watched too many hours of cable television news. He traces the beginnings of the political commentators to Walter Lippman, an early columnist for New York and Washington newspapers. Alterman credits - or blames - pundits' fascination with political celebrities to Lippman's loyalty to "the influence of his ideas and the idea of his influence" during the 1930s to 1950s. Alterman gives the genealogy of pundits through the mid-20th century presidents, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Developing media networks and the explosion of airtime through cable news channels created a void of programming that producers filled with commentary shows. They often staffed those shows with people who lacked the political depth that was required of commentators decades earlier; nevertheless, they became, ipso facto, pundits to fill the time. Alterman wrote the book in 1992 and issued a second edition in 1999, just after the explosion of Internet use. He discredits the influence of online punditry because "the true power of pundits is inside the punditocracy, rather than in the so-called real world." The Internet decreased the quality of the discourse rather than its power, he argues. Journalist Philip Nobile said that Alterman "like arsenic, is an acquired taste," and questioned his caustic tone. Alterman, to his credit, includes a small footnote more than 250 pages into the book (and in the material added for the second edition) about his involvement with the pundits and his career as one of the insiders: "I cannot say that the quality of my analysis, however superior or inferior to the rest of the available punditocracy fare, made any difference whatever in the world at large." Alterman began his media criticism career with Sound and Fury; he now writes "Stop the Presses," a media criticism column, for The Nation. He wrote What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News in 2003 and is an adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University. Online searches of his name reveal no dearth of reaction - mostly unfavorable - to his journalism. MORE: Alterman's biography in The Nation Index of names referenced in Sound and Fury |
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