The News Shapers

Analysts, political scientists, scholars, and consultants,--The News Shapers describes the elite club of individuals that the media approach for inside information, background, or predictions concerning the outcome of still-unfolding stories. Although they are presented as detached experts, Lawrence C. Soley uncovers their long histories of partisanship as former government officials or politicians, and charges that most of the shapers have no better credentials than the millions of people to whom the news media never turn. Soley's findings, based on a University of Minnesota study which examined three major networks' evening newscasts during 1987-1988, reveal that a small number of white, politically conservative men associated with Washington-based think tanks, former Republican administrations, and private, East Coast universities virtually monopolize political discourse in the mass media. Dispelling the myth of the media's liberal bias, Soley discusses the shortcomings of both print and broadcast journalism which lead to selection of partisan news analysts, and the effects of their commentaries on foreign and domestic affairs. Special attention is given to Henry Kissinger, Washington Think Tanks, and the media's handling of the conflict with Iraq. The News Shapers identifies the experts, their past political affiliations, and their often thin academic credentials. It is highly recommended for scholars in communications, journalism, and political science, as well as for newspaper readers and television news viewers.

News Narratives and News Framing is a revealing look at how the media's construction of news affects our political, economic, and social realities. In this introduction to the theory behind news framing, Karen Johnson-Cartee pulls together elements from communication, journalism, politics, and sociology to create a picture of how news forms these realities for the public. With its comprehensive reference section and suggestions on how to influence the news agenda, this is a beneficial resource for students in political communication, media criticism, and communication theory. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This book offers a fresh and accessible introduction to the relationship between media power and cultural production. By marshalling a range of theoretical perspectives from political economy and cultural studies, The Media and Cultural Production invites the reader to analyze the relationship between the making of meaning, political, economic and social power and the machinery of cultural production - the media. The book: critically examines the notion of the `cultural industries'; examines the regulatory framework in which the cultural industries operate; looks at the impact of globalization on cultural production; explores the way in which meaning is both produced and contested. The Media and

As the journalist Walter Lippmann noted nearly a century ago, democracy falters “if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news.” Today’s journalists are not providing it. Too often, reporters give equal weight to facts and biased opinion, stir up small controversies, and substitute infotainment for real news. Even when they get the facts rights, they often misjudge the context in which they belong. Information is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Public opinion and debate suffer when citizens are misinformed about current affairs, as is increasingly the case. Though the failures of today’s communication system cannot be blamed solely on the news media, they are part of the problem, and the best hope for something better. Patterson proposes “knowledge-based journalism” as a corrective. Unless journalists are more deeply informed about the subjects they cover, they will continue to misinterpret them and to be vulnerable to manipulation by their sources. In this book, derived from a multi-year initiative of the Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation, Patterson calls for nothing less than a major overhaul of journalism practice and education. The book speaks not only to journalists but to all who are concerned about the integrity of the information on which America’s democracy depends.

Tarek Cherkaoui reveals how geo-political and ideological legacies of the past, which divide the world into a dichotomy of 'us' against 'them', play a dominant role in reinforcing the ensuing polarisation of our media.

Because reporting is changing, this volume offers readers a thorough introduction to the rapidly evolving world of gathering information for local news organizations. This easy-to-read text is filled with contemporary examples and solid advice for the beginning reporting student. Designed for students with a foundation in news writing, it provides chapters on such basics as news research, interviewing, and observation skills. It further offers a chapter on the use of personal computers as research and reporting tools. Readers will find useful tips and examples written by award-winning professional journalists that reflect the numerous changes in the art and science of information gathering in the past decade.

College and university education has long been a material and intellectual luxury in American life. Fewer than 38 percent of Americans have ever attended college, and only about half that number hold bachelor's degrees. While post-World War Two legislation greatly democratized higher education, the editors of this volume contend that the system has never been a public stewardship. Many universities are devoted to private sector research rather than public learning, to productivity rather than democratic discourse, and because of diminished financial opportunities, increasingly exclude poor, working and lower middle class students, many of them people of color.The contributors to this volume recognize that the American system of higher education is the most open and egalitarian in the world. Largely for this reason, it is the only American institution which today enjoys a positive balance of trade. Many more foreign students come to study at American universities than do Americans go to study abroad. The study of higher education in an information age means examining higher education. The place of economics in decision-making is as a vehicle for social mobility.The volume covers a myriad of themes: the role of media ranking universities, and their contribution to low expectations of universities; the disjunction between massive support for college and university sports events and the intellectual and presumed academic missions of these institutions of higher learning; and boosterism as a general phenomenon in funding. Yet, editors and contributors alike emphasize new currents in the educational agenda. The essays cover efforts to close the gap between the mutual recriminations of universities and media leaders. The theme of this volume is that there is a crisis in higher education and a crisis hi knowledge - who produces it, controls it, uses it, and benefits by it. Properly understood, the issues common to both higher education and the media have profound implications for public life.This volume is critical of current practices, but also mindful that the university remains a place in which civil forms of discourse are central, and hence of great potential benefit to the dissemination of information and ideas as such. It will be of interest to professional interested hi communication and education.