International News & Foreign Correspondents (Newswork) [Hardcover]

Stephen Hess (Author)

Book Description

Series: Newswork | Publication Date: January 1996

Today, American public opinion is having more influence than ever on how U.S. leaders respond to international crises and formulate foreign policy. Yet at the same time, there is evidence that Americans are increasingly ill-informed of international affairs. This paradox raises many serious questions: What information about the world are we given by the mainstream media? How much? How good? By whom? Through what means? And how much foreign news is really enough? In this fifth volume of his highly acclaimed Newswork series, Stephen Hess addresses these questions and offers a revealing look at how the print and broadcast media cover international affairs and how foreign correspondents do their work. Hess contends that the United States is a nation of two media societies. One is awash in specialized information, available to those who have the time, interest, money, and education to take advantage of it. The other encompasses the vast majority of Americans, who rely on the top stories of TV networks' evening news programs and their community's daily newspaper. For them, Hess says, the current diet of international news offered is not adequate considering its potential importance to their lives. When the world imposes itself on the U.S. media, it does so in a big way--the Gulf War, the coup in Moscow, the fall of the Berlin Wall. But there are remarkable peaks and valleys in international news coverage. According to Hess, TV in particular shrinks the globe geographically--with Asia underrepresented and the Middle East overrepresented, for example. And much of TV's focus on international violence is gratuitous, telling us where and how, but very rarely why. Hess concludes with suggestionsfor improving international coverage.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 209 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Inst Pr; 1St Edition edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815736304
• ISBN-13: 978-0815736301
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,322,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book, claryfies the facts of international news, January 3, 1999

By 

Raul Penaranda ([e-mail]) (La Paz, Bolivia (South America)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: International News and Foreign Correspondents: With a New Introduction (Newswork) (Paperback)

This book is an excellent academic text for journalists or journalism students. It explains with deep knowledge the phenomenom of international news and the fact that the US public opinion is very underinformed about facts that happen outside its boundaries. The study itself, about the characteristics of the US correspondents is very detailed, maybe a bit more than necessary, but is very claryfying about their job. As a college teacher, I've found this book very helpfull to introduce and discuss the ways the information travels form one country to others. If you're intersted in exploring the extrange ways that a story becames an international new (newspaper, radio or TV new), you should buy this book.