Alert the Media: How the American Indian Movement used the Mass Media

Two vital and dynamite topics are merged into one book. Alert the Media studies how the American Indian Movement (AIM), a major political movement sweeping the country in the 1970s used, and was used by the mass media. Chapter topics include: Movement toward Social Change (basis of motivation, goals, structure and methods); Mass Media - Power and Responsibility (cultural history and development); American Indian Culture (language, beliefs, and institutions); American Indian Movement (AIM formation and foundation, leadership objectives and failures, and the trail of broken treaties); Wounded Knee - 1973 (General Custer in South Dakota, Wounded Knee Massacre, Chairman Wilson, and media involvement); Testimony of Douglas Durham, FBI Operative; and Dennis Banks in Oregon. The intense interaction between the mass media and mass movements such as AIM has generated undercurrents of public discontent and dissatisfaction with the media. The media's perceived participation in and encouragement of undesirable activities and repetition of messages connected with the increasing number of political and social causes and movements adds to a political polarization. Students of media, political science, and Native American culture and causes will be as interested in Alert the Media, as well as those readers who wish to become more educated and intelligent consumers of news. The public cannot rest its own responsibility for discernment on the shoulders of media representatives. Individuals have a responsibility to treat news and political commentary as they would treat any other commodity.