BANNED IN THE MEDIA: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO CENSORSHIP IN THE PRESS, MOTION PICTURES, BROADCASTING, AND THE INTERNET by Herbert N. Foerstel. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Cloth, $49.95. ISBN 0-313-30245-6.

Reviewed by John M. Scheb II, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
 

Due in large part to his four previous books (listed below), Herbert Foerstel is widely and rightly regarded as an expert on censorship and governmental attempts to control the dissemination of information to the mass public. Given the Foerstel bibliography and the subtitle to the instant work, I expected BANNED IN THE MEDIA to provide a thorough, if not encyclopedic, guide to media censorship. In this expectation I was acutely disappointed. At the end of the day, BANNED IN THE MEDIA falls far short of its mark. Although it contains some useful information and is generally well written, BANNED IN THE MEDIA suffers from fragmentation, a lack of clear focus, and ideological bias.

Foerstel's book is advertised as a reference guide, but the Introduction suggests that it is something else altogether--a polemic against censorship. Foerstel gets off to a provocative start in the Introduction, where he spends considerable effort lamenting the rise of "media monopolies." This, however, is not what most of the book is about. In the end, BANNED IN THE MEDIA is not particularly effective as polemic or reference. As a polemic, the book fails in that the argument is not made effectively, coherently or consistently throughout. As a reference guide, the book comes up short in that its coverage of the subject matter is superficial and fragmentary.

To his credit, Foerstel takes a broad view of censorship. He is interested not only in governmental suppression of expression, but also in the self-censorship of the corporate media. Equally creditable is his ambitious definition of the media to include the press, motion pictures, television, radio and the Internet. This broad definition results in an ambitious scholarly undertaking, but one that is not effectively carried out. In its brief 252 pages (fifty of which consist of two appendices and the index), BANNED IN THE MEDIA simply does not do justice to its subject.

This book could have been an extremely useful reference. Unfortunately, it suffers from severe fragmentation. It is almost as if the author juxtaposed a number of short works, none of which would stand alone as a publishable article or monograph. Chapters One, Two, and Three entitled, respectively, "A Brief History of Media Censorship," "Prominent Examples of Media Censorship," and "A Chronological History of Media Censorship Cases," might have provided the basis for a coherent book. As presented, they simply do not hang together well. The author would have been better advised to integrate and reorganize this material into a chronological treatment in which chapters correspond to historical eras. Chapter 4, "Voices from the Media," essentially a set of biographical sketches, adds little to the book and might have been dispensed with altogether. Finally, Appendix A, "The Student Press After Hazelwood," really just hangs out there by itself. It is somewhat interesting, but it doesn't fit well into the structure of the book (which, I suppose, is why it is included as an appendix).

In fairness it should be pointed out that Foerstel does provide a number of well-written and well-researched accounts of infamous instances of censorship. The account of the trial of John Peter Zenger is particularly compelling, as is the narrative entitled "H.L. Mencken and the Hatrack Case." Indeed, there are a number of important stories contained here, as well as some useful summaries of key court cases inclosing censorship. The problem is that the material is simply not integrated into a coherent whole.

I must also confess to being somewhat put off by the book's obvious left-leaning political slant, a bias which the author never acknowledges. From this book one would think that the only ideas ever subjected to censorship in this country were liberal and socialist ones. The truth is that extremist ideas from both ends of the political spectrum have been filtered out, watered down and often suppressed outright.

The political slant of the book is clearly revealed on page 123. In a terse discussion of GITLOW V. NEW YORK (1925), Foerstel writes, "After World War I, bolshevism came to be regarded as a major threat to entrenched political and financial interests in the United States and the courts were inclined to uphold the suppression of any leftist political expression." Surely bolshevism was cause for concern to Americans and all freedom-loving peoples, not merely the "corporate masters" of the American political system. In retrospect, the American response to bolshevism, especially on the home front, may have been disproportionate to the threat. Few today will defend blacklisting and the other excesses of the McCarthy era. But this country's impulse to expose communists and censor communist ideas was not entirely driven by "entrenched political and financial interests." It reflected a widespread and not totally groundless fear of a radical ideology being fostered by an emerging superpower hostile to freedom and democracy.

Finally, it must be noted that Foerstel commits a number of disconcerting errors that seriously detract from the scholarly credibility of the book. For example, on page 133, Foerstel refers to Justice Charles Evans Hughes' opinion for the Court in ESTES V. TEXAS (1965). Hughes, of course, had not been on the Court for two and a half decades when Estes was handed down (surely Foerstel realizes that Earl Warren was Chief Justice in 1965). Tom Clark in fact authored the Estes opinion. On the next page, Foerstel refers to Justice "William" Harlan's dissent in Ginzburg v. United States, which he also indicates as having been decided in 1965. The case, of course, was decided in 1966 and the dissent was written by Justice John M. Harlan (the younger). Such errors substantially reduce the book's utility as a reference guide.

Greenwood Press claims that the Foerstel book is of interest to "high school and college students, teachers, librarians and scholars, and all those who are affected by these crucial First Amendment issues. The book is a moderately useful reference guide for those with little background in the area. Its is of limited utility to serious students of the First Amendment, mass media or constitutional history.

Other books by Foerstel: BANNED IN THE U.S.A.: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO BOOK CENSORSHIP IN SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES (1994), FREE EXPRESSION AND CENSORSHIP IN AMERICA: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (1997), SECRET SCIENCE: FEDERAL CON-TROL OF AMERICAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (1993), SURVEILLANCE IN THE STACKS: THE FBI'S LIBRARY AWARENESS PROGRAM (1991).