Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money, and Local Television News by Danilo Yanich is fascinating research on the buying of elections and the lack of interest in either ads or news broadcasts to actually inform the public but to convince or persuade.

I found the information to be very interesting but I was hoping for at least a few more prescriptive ideas to make things better. It seemed like those ideas had as much to do with news departments reaching the younger audience but not so much with actually improving what they then present. TV ads still dominate and will continue to do so, especially for down ticket elections. Even local newscasts focus on national stories (and I use stories loosely since they have turned to entertainment more than being informative) so the ads are often all prospective voters have to go on when deciding local elections. Those ads, of course, tend toward emphasizing generic differences rather than explaining substantive policy differences, so voters by and large go into the voting booths ignorant of who or what they are voting for other than in very broad terms.

I really didn't see anything to be even remotely optimistic about here. What suggestions were made didn't seem to address improving democracy but rather broadening reach. The information was certainly critical of what the system is doing to democracy, how winning rather than governing has become the prime, if not only, objective, and how compromise has completely left government.

Our two party system will destroy this country and I'm not sure anyone or any group is going to be able to stop it. This book certainly presents a lot of good information, but it seems more like a book that future research will use to suggest improvements to the system. While that is important in the big picture, it makes the book a bit of a dry presentation of good information rather than a call for or even just suggestions for making our government work again. That said, I do recommend this to readers who want that information, who wonder how campaign funds are distributed with respect to advertising.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.