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An eye-opening case study of the news at war, introducing a critical perspective on our mass mediaThe Pen and the Sword is the only comprehensive examination of how the media have covered the 21st Century’s #1 news story: terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the full story—from 9/11 to the Obama doctrine, and including:The increasing importance of entertainment media and soft news in shaping our views.

The collection is introduced with an essay by Barbie Zelizer and organized into three sections: how tabloidization affects the journalistic landscape; how technology changes what we think we know about journalism; and how ‘truthiness’ tweaks our understanding of the journalistic tradition. Short section introductions contextualise the essays and highlight the issues that they raise, creating a coherent study of journalism today. Introduction: Why Journalism’s Changing Faces Matter. Barbie Zelizer Part 1: On Tabloidization 1. Rethinking a Villain, Redeeming a Format: The Crisis and Cure in Tabloidization. Michael Serazio 2. Can Popularization Help the News Media? Herbert J. Gans 3. Tears and Trauma in the News. Carolyn Kitch 4. Tabloidization: What Is It and Does It Really Matter? S. Elizabeth Bird Part 2: On Technology 5. The Impact of Technology on Journalism. Lokman Tsui 6. Materiality and Mimicry in Contemporary Journalistic Practice. Pablo Boczkowski 7. The Guardian of the Real: Journalism in the Time of the New Mind. Julianne H. Newton 8. Technology and the Individual Journalist: Agency Beyond Imitation and Change. Mark Deuze Part 3: On Truthiness 9. Rethinking Truth through Truthiness. Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt 10. Two Cheers for Positivism: Factual Knowledge in the Age of Truthiness. Michael Schudson 11. The Moment of Truthiness. James Ettema 12. Believable Fictions: Redactional Culture and the Will to Truthiness. Jeffrey Jones Afterword: The Troubling Evolution of Journalism. Peter Dahlgren. Barbie Zelizer is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication and Director of the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. A former journalist, Zelizer is known for her work in the area of journalism, culture, memory and images, particularly in times of crisis. Previous publications for Routledge include Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime (2004) and Journalism After September 11 (2002) (both co-edited with Stuart Allan) and Explorations in Communication and History (2008). \"These essays invite the reader to see the opportunities for the renewal of journalism and contribute significant discussion to the debate over journalism's future...Highly recommended.\" - CHOICE

Upends the traditional media narrative that watchdog (accountability) journalism is in a long, dismaying declineWatchdog reporting has played a critical role in the events of the moment, from the 2016 election to the developing political situation Perhaps no other function of a free press is as important as the watchdog role-its ability to monitor the work of the government. It is easier for politicians to get away with abusing power, wasting public funds, and making poor decisions if the press is not shining its light with what is termed \"accountability reporting.\" This need has become especially clear in recent months, as the American press has come under virulent direct attack for carrying out its watchdog duties. This book presents a study of how this most important form of journalism, watchdog reporting, came of age in the digital era at American newspapers. Based on the first content analysis to focus specifically on accountability journalism nationally,The Watchdog Still Barksexamines the front pages of nine newspapers, located across the United States, for clues on how papers addressed the watchdog role as the advent of the Internet transformed journalism. This portrait of the modern newspaper industry shows how papers of varying sizes and ownership structures around the country marshaled resources for accountability reporting despite significant financial and technological challenges. Although the American newspaper industry contracted significantly during the 1990s and 2000s, as the digital transformation drove down circulation and print ad revenues, the data collected here shows that papers studied actually held fast to the watchdog role. Although the newspapers studied all endured large budget and staff cuts during the 20 years studied as paid circulation and advertising dropped, the amount of deep watchdog reporting on their front pages generally increased over time.The Watchdog Still Barkscontains original interviews with editors of the newspapers studied, who explain why they are staking their papers' futures on the one thing that American newspapers still do better than any other segment of the media-watchdog and investigative reporting. Uses empirical methods (content analysis and interviews), where previous studies have generalized from anecdotes (and arrived at the wrong conclusion)

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC's coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists' shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC's practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the \"former audience\" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC's news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation. While the focus of the book is on the BBC's coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.

\"Guardians of Power ought to be required reading in every media college. It is the most important book about journalism I can remember.\" John Pilger \"Regular critical analysis of the media, filling crucial gaps and correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying out this task with energy, insight, and care.\" Noam Chomsky \"Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream media to at least follow their own stated principles and meet their public service obligations. [This is] fun as well as enlightening.\" Edward S. Herman Can a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations? Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' Guardian and the Independent, tell the truth about catastrophic climate change -- about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism -- when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75% of their revenues? Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: \"They know they can trust us not to be really impartial\"? Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95% \"fundamentally disarmed\" as early as 1998? This book answers these questions, and more. Since July 2001, Media Lens has encouraged thousands of readers to email senior editors and journalists, challenging them to account for their distorted reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, East Timor, climate change, Western crimes in Central America, and much more. The responses -- often surprising, sometimes outrageous -- reveal the arrogance, unaccountability and servility to power of even our most respected media.

From Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, Americans are accustomed to thinking of right-wing media as integral to contemporary conservatism. But today's well-known personalities make up the second generation of broadcasting and publishing activists.Messengers of the Righttells the story of the little-known first generation. Beginning in the late 1940s, activists working in media emerged as leaders of the American conservative movement. They not only started an array of enterprises-publishing houses, radio programs, magazines, book clubs, television shows-they also built the movement. They coordinated rallies, founded organizations, ran political campaigns, and mobilized voters. While these media activists disagreed profoundly on tactics and strategy, they shared a belief that political change stemmed not just from ideas but from spreading those ideas through openly ideological communications channels. InMessengers of the Right, Nicole Hemmer explains how conservative media became the institutional and organizational nexus of the conservative movement, transforming audiences into activists and activists into a reliable voting base. Hemmer also explores how the idea of liberal media bias emerged, why conservatives have been more successful at media activism than liberals, and how the right remade both the Republican Party and American news media.Messengers of the Rightfollows broadcaster Clarence Manion, book publisher Henry Regnery, and magazine publisher William Rusher as they evolved from frustrated outsiders in search of a platform into leaders of one of the most significant and successful political movements of the twentieth century.

Accusations of partisan bias in Presidential election coverage are suspect at best and self-serving at worst. They are generally supported by the methodology of instance confirmation, tainted by the hostile media effect, and based on simplistic visions of how the news media are organized. Media Bias in Presidential Election Coverage 1948-2008 by Dave D’Alessio, is a revealing analysis that shows the news media have four essential natures: as journalistic entities, businesses, political actors, and property, all of which can act to create news coverage biases, in some cases in opposing directions. By meta-analyzing the results of 99 previous examinations of media coverage of Presidential elections from 1948 to 2008, D’Alessio reveals that coverage has no aggregate partisan bias either way, even though there are small biases in specific realms that are generally insubstantial. Furthermore, while publishers used to control coverage preferences, this practice has become negligible in recent years. Media Bias proves that, at least in terms of Presidential election coverage, The New York Times is not the most liberal paper in America and the Fox News channel is substantially more conservative in news coverage than the broadcast networks. Finally, Media Bias in Presidential Election Coverage 1948-2008 predicts that no amount of evidence will cause political candidates to cease complaining about bias because such accusations have both strategic potential in campaigns and an undeniable utility in ego defense.

The history of American journalism is marked by disturbing representations of people and communities of color, from the disgraceful stereotypes of pre-civil rights America, to the more subtle myths that are reflected in routine coverage by journalists all over the country. Race and News: Critical Perspectives aims to examine these journalistic representations of race, and in doing so to question whether or not we are living in a post-racial world. By looking at national coverage of stories like the Don Imus controversy, Hurricane Katrina, Barak Obama's presidential candidacy, and even the Virginia Tech shootings, readers are given an opportunity to gain insight into both subtle and overt forms of racism in the newsroom and in national dialogue. The book itself is divided into two sections, with the first examining the journalistic routine and the decisions that go into covering a story with, or without, relation to race. The second section, comprised of case studies, explores the coverage of national stories and how they have impacted the dialogue on race and racism in the United States. As a whole, the collection of essays and studies also reflects a variety of research approaches. With a goal of contributing to the discussion about race and its place in American journalism, this broad examination makes Race and News an ideal text for courses on cultural diversity and the media, as well as making it valuable to professional journalists and journalism students who seek to improve their approach to coverage of diverse communities.

Partisan media is popular, but poisonous, according to Tim Dixon, the co-author of a new study, \"The Hidden Tribes of America.\" Dixon tells Brian Stelter that most Americans aren't locked in the cold civil war that's taking place on partisan cable news shows and talk radio. Instead, 67 percent are part of what he calls the \"exhausted majority.\" So what should the media do to represent those voices?

The first in-depth, authoritative discussion of the role of the press in China and the way the Chinese government uses the media to shape public opinion China's 1.3 billion population may make the country the world's largest, but the vast majority of Chinese share remarkably similar views on these and a wide array of other issues, thanks to the unified message they get from tightly controlled state-run media. Official views are formed at the top in organizations like the Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television and allowed to trickle down to regional and local media, giving the appearance of many voices with a single message that is reinforced at every level. As a result, the Chinese are remarkably like-minded on a wide range of issues both domestic and foreign. Takes readers beyond China's economic miracle to show how the nation's massive state-run media complex not only influences public opinion but creates it Explores an array of issues, from Tibet and Taiwan to the environment and US trade relations, as seen through the lens of the Xinhua News Agency Tells the story of the official Xinhua News Agency along with its history and reporting over the years, as the foundation for telling the story