American Journalism and International Relations: Foreign Correspondence from the Early Republic to the Digital Era
Cambridge University Press, 3/29/2013
EAN 9781107031951, ISBN10: 1107031958
Hardcover, 296 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
American Journalism and International Relations argues that the American press' disengagement from world affairs has critical repercussions for American foreign policy. Giovanna Dell'Orto shows that discourses created, circulated and maintained through the media mold opinions about the world and shape foreign policy parameters. This book is a history of US foreign correspondence from the 1840s to the present. Americans' perceptions of other nations, combined with pervasive and enduring understandings of the United States' role in global politics, act as constraints on policies. Dell'Orto finds that reductive media discourse (as seen during the 1967 War in the Middle East or Afghanistan in the 1980s) has a negative effect on policy, whereas correspondence grounded in events (such as during the Japanese attack on Shanghai in the 1930s or the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991) fosters effective leadership and realistic assessments.
1. Introduction
the American press and international relations
2. A new country, a new profession
America and its foreign correspondents get ready to take on the world
3. America takes global center stage
the ascent of a political and communication power
4. The media are American in the American century
the apex of American political and communication power
5. A web of disentanglements
American policy and media struggle to engage the post-Cold War world
6. The importance of being there and making people care
the troubled present and possible futures of US foreign correspondence
7. Conclusion
reaffirming journalism's role in world affairs.
'Dell'Orto's reflections on the past and future of international news as it relates to American democracy merit close attention by anyone interested in the evolution of the nation's worldview and in its need for substantive foreign news. This volume makes a major contribution to the study of journalism and international relations from an American perspective.' James D. Startt, American Journalism