NORMAN SOLOMON

Nationally Syndicated Columnist

Ideal Use: Media, politics, racism, human rights, peace, justice and media bias programs

Watch Interview with Normal Solomon here

Norman Solomon is a journalist whose accuracy and courage in revealing the media bias "behind the news" informs and inspires audiences around the country.

This nationally syndicated columnist is co-author of the widely praised book Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media which the Washington Post Book World concluded "makes a worthy addition to the library of any student of American news media, social structure and political science. Another book, Wizard of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (co-authored with Jeff Cohen), was published in summer 1997. A review in The Nation magazine said: "One of the great values of this book is that it demolishes the myth that liberalism dominates the media. This nifty, easily digestible compendium ought to be used in high school and college courses to help the young learn how to be discriminating news consumers. At a time when the syndicated rantings of ultra-right media critics are widely available, Wizard of Media Oz provides a bracing antidote." Ralph Nader also praised the book: "Wizards documents what millions of Americans feel: that the mass media are dominated by a few giant conglomerates (like GE, Disney, Murdoch, Gannet and TCI) whose advertisers help shape what is permissible 'news' and 'opinions.'.The layered biases, the taboos, the routines and the hypocrisy of this industry are described in memorable detail that names the players and the sacred cows."

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Solomon's book, The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh, cracks the code of corporate America's funniest double agent. In a fresh, funny and brazen attack, Solomon is the first to reveal what Dilbert's creator Scott Adams is really up to.

Described by Utne Reader as one of the "fiercest and most articulate media critics around," Norman Solomon has appeared on many national TV and radio programs including ABC-TV's Good Morning America, NPR's All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, and CNN Television's Crossfire on which he debated Patrick Buchanan. C-Span televised nationally a 90-minute lecture that Solomon presented before a large audience in Berkeley, California. More recently he has been on National Public Radio, The Jim Lehrer NewsHour and twice on CNN's nationally televised program, Talkback Live.

The latest collection of Norman Solomon's syndicated columns won the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. The award, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English, went to Solomon's ninth book, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News. In the introduction to that book, Jonathan Kozol wrote: "The tradition of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and I.F. Stone does not get much attention these days in the mainstream press ... but that tradition is alive and well in this collection of courageously irreverent columns on the media by Norman Solomon."

 

Some of Solomon's lecture titles include:

• War Made Easy
• The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media
• The Myth of the Liberal Media
• The Power of Babble: Decoding Political Rhetoric
• War and Media Bias: From Iraq to Kosovo
• Media Bias: Myths and Realities
• The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh