Harald Hornmoen, Birgitte Kjos Fonn, Nathalie Hyde-Clark, and Yngve Benestad Hågvar, eds., Media Health: The Personal in Public Stories

depots, and command-and-control centers for white supremacist gangs that attacked African American communities, disrupted elections, and fomented chaos to undermine Reconstruction government” (p. 303). For example, the chapter on “Architect of the New South” describes how Henry W. Grady, who became managing editor and part owner of the Atlanta Constitution in 1880, established practices, such as sensationalized coverage of lynchings that encourage mob violence to escalate. In a different but also troubling example, the “Mississippi Plan” chapter describes how Ethelbert Barksdale, the editor of the Clarion, used the newspaper as a “political weapon . . . to sow chaos at political rallies and at polling sites to disrupt” (p. 117) Blacks from voting. Interspersed throughout the book are stories that offer more hope. These detail how leaders of the Black press, such as Ida B. Wells, T. Thomas Fortune, John Mitchell Jr. and others “provided the essential forum for Black dissent” (p. 95). Collectively, these accounts demonstrate the power and role of the Black press, which offers an important counterpoint to the harm that the White southern press was doing. I only wish these stories were more plentiful throughout the volume. The editors end their book with a call to action. They urge newsroom leaders and journalists nationwide to learn from this history as they cover voter suppression, misand disinformation and anti-democratic behavior. I love this part of the book because it connects our past to our present, highlighting the real need to consider what has come before us to prevent it from happening again. Yet, I wonder whether those who most need to read this book, the practitioners of today, will find its very academic writing accessible. Given the need for journalists, and indeed all people, to read what is inside these pages, I wish it were written in a simpler, more journalistic manner. Some sections are quite dense and I suspect few non-academics would want to brook them. However, the important message of this book still resounds: “. . . in the United States, journalism has always been a political activity and journalists have always been political actors. . . Journalists should finally vanquish the misguided view that objectivity demands rigid neutrality” (p. 314).