In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorous empirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy.

In the 1940s, at the height of segregation, Charles Preston became the unlikely newest worker at a black owned-and-operated newspaper. Preston, a white man and, unbeknownst to most of his colleagues, member of the Communist Party, quickly came face to face with issues of race and injustice that would profoundly impact his life and change the way he understood society in the United States. This fictionalized account of his experience tells readers what it was like to be the only white worker, and a communist at that, at a black newspaper, while unflinchingly depicting the racism that was so common and accepted in the 1950s.