International News Reporting Edited by John Owen and Heather Purdey

Book review by Nihal Al-aqabawy

The editors of this book are two journalists who turned into Educators. I believe that is an added value to the book because it gives the reader an in depth look into real life journalism but without ruling out the student expectations of questions and points that needs to be touched upon. The book are 14 chapters written by different journalists before being edited by Owen and Purdey.

In this review I will only touch on chapters that were of interest to me as a journalist.

Chapter 1 of International News Reporting was more of a shock because here is another war reporter discussing war reporting from a completely different angle. Janine di Giovanni shows in this chapter that in cases of war first person reporting is fundamental. And that can only happen when journalists see the story early not as David Halberstam wrote
“They [journalists] come to a story a little late and then leave a little too early,”.

Giovanni gave us a ride on how it feels to report from the trenches while dodging fire. And how different your point of view would be when watching atrocities of the war happen in front of your eyes. As a journalist she needed to look hard in the eyes of the dead to be able to draw the right picture to her readers.

Giovanni concludes with the dilemma of can you stop after one war or do you need the thrill to live till one of these wars kill you. She also sheds the light on is it different from one journalists perspective to the other in the context of if I have kids will I do the same job the same way or I would better take cover because I need to see my kids grow.

One would think that training to journalists who are to go to war zones is essential but she shows by attending one of these that they are misinforming reporters on how to act on different occasions.

Chapter 6 which is entitled Diplomacy and journalism. Not all the book chapters’ have this kind of introduction which is not written by the Bridget Kendall who is the author of the whole chapter but by one of the book editors who is John Owen. The introduction sheds light on the way students has to walk through while reading the chapter to reach the point the editors are trying to introduce. And specifically in this chapter because most Arab media cannot draw this line I was following every line with passion to the following.

Diplomatic reporting in Egypt for example is always a one sided story that tells the government’s stated point of view. Although adding the other side will not affect the journalist sources, almost all the time will not find it because also most of the time it is just too much work. And that is shown in the first part of the chapter when the author tries to explain the dangers of relying too heavily on official sources.

Egyptian journalists almost never think ahead of a diplomatic meeting and because of that they always stuck with the statements released by official sources or their spokesmen because of the lack of research. I also find it obvious in Egyptian news that journalists especially high profile journalists like editors in chief and reporters who cover the president they cannot keep their distance with their sources. They are either friendly with their sources or got their news through a third party gossip.

When it comes to predications in Egypt that is almost always embedded in editorials but to “call a story right “that only happens with newspapers editors in chief like Alahram for example that get information leaked by the government for a reason and publish it as their scoop.

As much as I believe the part about attributing sources will look interesting and beneficial to the whole class for me Prof. Shaheen Pasha got the scoop on this one. I think ordinary citizens have no clue of this code however that does not constitute the whole Egyptian public. Intellectuals in Egypt have a big role in forming the public opinion.

Moving to the pit that many Egyptian journalists fall in the “government spin”, being skeptical about the government’s agenda embedded in its statements needs a new perspective on how to research a story ahead.

And finally I disagree with Kendall that it is not possible to be neutral when reporting on international issues because I have seen Western journalists who try really hard to be objective and you know what I think trying hard always gets journalists the right place.

I enjoyed reading the introduction to chapter 7 entitled “Non Stop Deadlines 24 hour news”. I agree with Owen in his introduction with regard to the ‘CNN effect’ I felt the same in Egypt when the first US-Iraq war erupted with Bush Senior in power then. I was still in high school but CNN was the only channel on all day long at our house.

Nick Pollard showed in this chapter how “the ability to go live at the scene of a news story” might not add much to “the quality of coverage” but it keeps the audience hooked up to the news channel for days and sometimes for weeks and he gave two different example the death of Princess Diana and the trial of the British nanny in Boston.

Pollard also shed the light on different situations when the news channels has nothing to cover and they still need advertisers because as he said the main weakness in the 24 hour news is its reliance on breaking news which cannot be planned or anticipated to provide advertisers with peak figures.

Moving to Chapter 8 entitled World Perspectives: Ignoring the World at our Peril by Tony Burman. “If information is power ignorance can be dangerous”.

Tony Burman argues that the Pew study of news preferences showing poor understanding of significant international stories demonstrates that 24 hour continuous news channels have failed to direct the public attention towards foreign news. Although the Pew study lists Tabloid and foreign news as the areas of least interest to the public over the two decades in recent years’ coverage of foreign news has shrunk but not so tabloid. So in covering news like the OJ Simpson trial news channels are thinking of commerce and ratings as the study showed that according to the polls audiences are either indifferent to or disapproving of that coverage.

Of course being edited by broadcast journalists who teach other broadcast journalists it is written in a simple and agreeable way. In simple English it is easy and fun to read and it gets interesting with every line you read. It is expensive but it is worth every penny.

Moving to Chapter 10 Chris Cramer gives us an overview of how journalists can live to tell the story using the new measures of safety management through the eyes of a former president and managing director of CNN.

“Staff and free lancers should be made aware that unwarranted risk is pursuit of a story are unacceptable and must be strongly discouraged,” part of the new safety guidelines endorsed by BBC, CNN and some other organizations such as ITN, Reuters and APTN at the Newsworld Conference in Barcelona in November 2000.

The chapter shows how it was hard to get journalists to follow such regulations and use protective gear when reporting wars because “They become target,” and “they distinguish us from the local population and render us incapable from doing our job.”

Chapter 11 is a continuation of Chapter 10 where the author discuses how to deal with emotions and trauma is still give good journalism. But it gets interesting when the author starts explaining how to report trauma. The author also goes into details on how to interview people who have been traumatized. But finding and writing the story in the aftermath of all that appears to be the hard part. The author has almost covered every question or aspect a reader could wonder about even the question of what if somebody is hurt and how to deal with that while doing the job.

The following chapter is discussing reporting humanitarian crises around the world. The most troubling stories which journalists cover are the stories where they keep being haunted by their pictures like images of an earthquake or a mudslide. Also the sounds of wailing children, it is “both clichéd and overwhelming”. The author explains how to write a feature on a humanitarian issue and how working with aid agencies can keep journalists in touch with the grass roots of issues that they should be covering.

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Egyptian journalists suffer ethically and financially

By Nihal Al-aqabawy

“Journalists make a promise to their readers that they are going to deliver the truth and when they violate that promise it is a crime,” said Hassan Fattah Deputy editor of The National newspaper.

Fattah leads a team of journalists who work hard every day to deliver news in the United Arab Emirates.

But what happens if one of these reporters did not do enough reporting and just copied someone else’s work?

“Plagiarism is a crime,” said Fattah. “I will not tolerate it.”

Numerous cases of plagiarism have been discovered around the world.

For that reason, the first thing editors’ worry about in any news organization, regardless of the type of media, is whether the reporter was able to get his or her facts right.

“Where did you get this information from?” This is the most frequently asked question in each and every news room around the globe.

For any reporter the answer to that most common question should be that the information came from the sources he cultivated himself.

Because when the reporter does not get the facts through his own reporting, then the question of who bears the responsibility for the accuracy of the facts is raised.

And facts are part of the accuracy and credibility of any news organization.

“We depend entirely on our credibility, without it we are nothing.” said Deborah Potter former network correspondent at CBS News and CNN.

While in the West reporters derive their facts from their own reporting, in Egypt, some reporters tend to get their facts from other news organizations.

However, that is not always the case.

Mohammed Ismail, a TV beat reporter who works at Almasaya newspaper doesn’t do the office morning trip that most intellectuals in Egypt do.

As an Egyptian journalist with 18 years experience, Ismail can use either the news room or his office to craft his stories.

But he prefers to do his reporting on the street where the action is.

“I am an investigative journalist. My work does not happen in my office.” he said.

Ismail believes that if he waits in the newsroom like his Egyptian counterparts who remain to find the news and put it in their newspapers, he is not accomplishing his goal.

“I have to get the story no one is telling.” said Ismail. ”This kind of story requires a lot of time and work in making the right sources that makes my facts accurate and credible.”

For reporters facts are the heart of any story because they allow the hidden stories to emerge.

The actual story telling is just the pretty frame into which they put their facts.

With the boom in the world of telecommunications, reporters now use not only the news wires offered by their organizations but also individual subscriptions to news wires by mobile phones and sometimes available information on the Web.

The abundance of electronic information can be tempting for those that want a quick way during the reporting process.

“I can’t just copy and paste information from the Internet or news wires.” said Ismail. “That affects my credibility and accuracy.”

Unfortunately, some reporters not only copy and paste from news wires and Internet sources without any attribution, but they also copy and paste from their colleagues’ work.

“One of the principles of journalism is don’t invent and don’t use others work as yours,” said Potter. “There is no way that you will be sure that the information you have is correct.”

To cover up their laziness some reporters copy exclusive news from other news organization and put their name on them as if they did the reporting.

“I had the scoop on a corruption scandal in the Radio and TV Union and it was just copied by other beat reporters and very prominent journalists in newspapers like Al-gomhoria, Al-Nabaa, Al-wafed, and Sout Al-Oma.” said Ismail.

This is considered plagiarism because it went without attribution to Ismail as the source of information.

“It is stealing,” said Potter. “You are stealing someone else’s work and passing it as your own.”

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own or/and to use (another’s production) without crediting the source also to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

“They even copied the spelling mistakes,” said Ismail. “I told one of them you only forget to take the pen I wrote with.”

In a bid to protect his work, Ismail called all the editors of the publications in which the plagiarized work appeared.

While, he said the editors apologized, he added that the actions they took against the reporters varied from place to place.

“They all reprimanded their reporters one way or the other but some newspapers wrote a correction in the form of, we mistakenly forget to say that the source of information is so and so,” said Ismail. “Private newspapers however fearing to lose their credibility refused to write anything and said if you write something we will publish it for you, and of course I refused.”

One of the reporters Ismail accused of lifting his work was TV beat reporter Amer Abo Hatab who has two years of experience on the job.

“Yes, I copied from his article.” said Abo Hatab. “But it wasn’t only me, very famous and respectable journalists did the same.”

However, the burning question remains why some reporters refuse to attribute information that they themselves did not acquire.

“It makes them look lazy and they did not do the reporting.” said Potter.

Some journalists call for changing the copyrights law to cover articles and newspapers editorials.

Potter however, believes to stop plagiarism journalists need to focus on promoting journalists’ ethics.

“It is not the law, it is unethical” said Potter.

Ethics is what makes audience anticipate credibility in journalists’ work.

For that reason, news organizations should promote ethics to newly hired journalists.

“When I started work at CBS they gave us the book of standards and ethics and it talked about plagiarism,” said Potter.

But do editors check enough to prevent plagiarism?

“The policy is to tape any interview we had and then transcribe it verbatim,” said Ethar El-katatney an Egypt Today reporter. “But I think we are adults and mature enough not to be asked to submit them to be reviewed.”

That is not the only way editors make sure they have the right facts.

“Any article I write is reviewed by three editors and then they pass it to two copy editors followed by two proof readings,” said El-katatney “But it cannot go to print before it is signed by the managing editor.”

Although plagiarism is frequently spotted in Egypt, still it is not confined to it.

“There are numerous cases in the US but when they are discovered people lose their jobs,” said Potter.

Five years ago, then 27-year old Jayson Blair resigned from The New York Times over charges of plagiarism.

The New York Times published on its website a 10-page article describing the new facts they had on articles he wrote that were then labeled emotional and sensational.

And even before Blair, there was Stephen Glass who worked as a reporter for The New Republic.

Glass did not copy someone else’s information.  Instead, he created his own information, people and even corporations.

Like Egypt, magazines and newspapers in the USA have people who check every reporter’s facts.

However, Glass got away with it for long because he had once been fact checker himself and so he knew how to fake it.

After being caught, Glass never worked as a reporter ever again.

That wasn’t quite the case with The New York Times’ South America reporter, Alexei Barrionuevo.

Shaheen Pasha had her run in with Barrionuevo when she was a reporter for CNN Money.com.

“I met him during the Enron trial and once he was sitting beside me and the next day I found three paragraphs copied from my article to his,” said Shaheen Pasha former Dow Jones and CNN online business reporter. “When I confronted him he said we were sitting beside each other so maybe we heard the same things.”

Barrionuevo, however, came under widespread scrutiny later when he was accused of plagiarizing one of his articles named “Cheap Cocaine floods Argentine, Devouring lives” in an article by Jack Shafer in Slate magazine.

Again such a reputable newspaper like the Times had to respond to the accusation. However, the Times only appended his article on its website with an editor’s note.

“The article included an explanatory paragraph about paco’s addictive power and toxicity that repeated material from a 2006 article published in The Miami Herald, without attributing it to the newspaper. The correspondent, who had done his own research with Argentine and Brazilian officials on the drug and its effects, should have summarized it in his own words, or credited The Herald.” said Times Editor’s note on its website.

A week later, Slate magazine cited another example of plagiarism in Barrionuevo’s work in a 2005 online article named “Beef imports from Canada to resume”.

The Craig Silverman Regret the Error website published the Times managing Editor response to the second accusation.

“It appears that Alexei did not fully understand Times policy of not using wire boilerplate and giving credit when we do make use of such material. As I mentioned to you, other papers do permit unattributed use of such material. He should not have inserted wire material into his Times coverage without attribution. That said, because the new examples do not involve many words or an original thought, the transgression does not seem to be as serious as the first instance on paco.” said Jill Abrasom Times Managing Editor cited in regret the error website.

“Every publication has its own practices, as in the case of Alexei, the New York Times gave him a slap of the wrist, “said Pasha.

And in Egypt, Plagiarism is not the only issue journalists suffer from.

“I write in different newspapers with a slightly different name,” said Abo Hatab. “I cannot pay for living expenses’ by working in one place.”

Editors forbid reporters from working in other publications but they can’t survive with such low income. They use the first two names in one newspaper and the first and the third name in another and the first and the family name in a third….etc.

“If they are selling the same story with different names that would be misleading,” said Potter.

A professional journalist never underestimates the power of his or her pen as words can make peace and create war.

And a smart journalist never underestimates his audience because he may know something about it but someone back there in the audience knows everything about it.

The Press

Book Review By Nihal Al-aqabawy

“The Press” is coauthored by a number of professional journalists and scholars as contributors. Their work however, was collected and edited by Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The first Chapter in the assigned reading is the second one which is a historical background of how the American press evolved till it reached its current “Present”. It offers a thorough examination of how news became a profession across varied American cultures and different political systems.

Chapter 2 sheds the light on how different developments in the US history have had varying outcomes on the press institution. It gives a historical background on how American press tried to free itself from the control of political parties. The institution then fell under the control of subscribers who weigh nowadays as the advertisers. The chapter shows how the newspaper business benefited from the first amendment and the Postal Act.

It focuses on how the “penny press” has changed the face of newspapers in the US as it broadened and forced the sense of what counts as news concentrating even more on the dedication to making profits than promoting policies. And the authors conclude that these profits are still considered an incentive for the press to reform itself because this is the only way it will get the audience.

And the authors’ final note was that the future of news and the future of democracy are knotted together because journalism is becoming more complex.

Moving to Chapter 3 entitled the nature and sources of news. The author defines the role of the press the same way Finley Peter Dunne did 100 years ago “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Yet the author argues that this role is lost because of diminishing demand by the citizens for “accountability news”.

First, the demand by the public on news organizations that agrees with ones political perspective and thinking. For example, Americans tend to get their news from sources that are relevant to their political thinking like Fox.

Second, the demand on infotainment and Reality TV made it even harder for the public to reach accountability news because the market sends signals to media organizations. However, in countries like Egypt where journalists reached the point of self censorship on accountability news the infotainment programs like El-Bait Beitak on Channel One in Egyptian Television is striving to commit to all 4 key journalistic standards and still focus on accountability news. They are not aiming for the editorial separation standard because it affects their viewership.

The author points out the reasons that makes traditional and advocacy journalism generally superior to tabloid and entertainment at assisting democratic citizenship. The reasons are credibility through attribution, timeliness of reports, stories focusing on identified government officials and well documented factual reports and analyses.

The author encourages the use of traditional and advocacy journalism as means of keeping the public informed. He however, acknowledges that soft news, tabloid news and infotainment can sometimes execute news functions.

The Press 1&6

Chapter one of The Press discusses how news media around the world vary considerably in their styles, structures, and social and political roles.

The differences are less dramatic nowadays than they were a generation ago because globalization has resulted in a considerable degree of consistency of media systems.

Mainly the commercial structure of the press is more prevalent and the common culture of journalism has increasingly spread around the world.

This chapter discusses the nature of these differences and the reasons behind their existence.

The weakness of comparative research done before is illustrated by the reality that the Four Theories of The Press is still influential despite the many critiques directed against it over the years.

Written in the 1950s, these theories proposed four models of what media should be and should do.

These models are the authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility and communist.

Western Media Systems:

The liberal model, prevails in the USA, British colonies, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The polarized pluralist model prevails in southern European countries that had relatively long and conflicted transitions to democracy.

The democratic corporatist model prevails in northern and central European countries with strong welfare states and political systems based on compromises among highly organized social groups.

The Authors differentiate these models in four major dimensions , first by the emergence of a mass circulation press, second by the degree and nature of state involvement in the media, third by the degree of political parallelism and finally by the degree of professionalization.

The Liberal Model’s characteristics:

First, commercial newspapers developed early and displaced other forms of media

Second, state interventions in the media system is limited compared with other systems.

Third, a strong form of journalistic professionalism developed, centered around the “objectivity norm”.

Although the American media has evolved into a fourth branch of the government, a significant influence on the press in both countries dates back in history to World War II.

It is considered as voluntary cooperation between the state and the media in time of conflict “patriotic fervor”.

One exception to the political neutrality of the US through much of the 20^th century was the ethnic press particularly the black press.

However, the US journalism still has a strong form of professionalism and centers on norms such as objectivity balance and fairness, as well as other ethical norms.

These norms gradually limited the role of powerful newspapers’ owners.

Speaking of an Anglo-American model of journalism is a bit misleading.

British newspapers also exhibit a high level of party-press parallelism with a media market that reflects the major political divisions in society.

And the reasons behind this are first the British political system is characterized by more unified ideologically distinct parties and second the newspapers market is a competitive national market.

The Polarized Pluralist Model:

This model emerged as a part of the worlds of literature and of politics market.

The state has generally played an interventionist role in the media systems of southern Europe.

In southern Europe the monarchy, the landed aristocracy, and the Catholic and Orthodox churches were powerful forces that stood against the objectivity ad balance norms.

Advocacy journalism tended to be the rule and political neutrality was dismissed as naïve or opportunistic.

Although the author consider France as a mixed case sharing characteristics of both the polarized pluralist and democratic corporatist models, historically French journalism provided the model for the “journalism of ideas” in contrast to the “journalism of information”.
Example: Le Monde diplomatic

The Democratic Corporatist Model characteristics:

First, the countries combine strong principles of press freedom with active state intervention in the media.

Second, commercial media industries coexisted with media liked to political parties, religious communities, and trade unions, as well as media presenting a point of view.

Finally, the democratic corporatist system combines political parallelism with a high degree of journalistic professionalization.

The role of commentary in their jobs has been more significant than in the liberal system, and they have understood it as their responsibility to report the news form a point of view.

Journalistic autonomy is the equal of that in the liberal model countries.
Example: Swedish newspaper “The Local”

Some predict that all three systems will converge into the liberal model.

According to this chapter I believe Egyptian journalism lies in the polarized pluralist model and will never in the future reach the liberal model because of the community’s diversities and the increased political parallelism. Being optimistic it can reach the democratic corporatist.

Moving to Chapter 6 entitled the journalism and democracy across borders the author here shows how new technologies have “encouraged a talk of universal abundance” which started to work as the ideology of computer communication networks.

These computer networks established “a new world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force or station of birth.”

Through this approach the author describes how the American culture is “becoming universal because it is universally present”.

The author believes that global journalism has helped lay the brass tacks of global social movements and civic initiatives that is the basic prerequisite for nurturing democracy within and across borders.

The new global journalism has similar characteristics. It includes all forms of journalism. It does not recognize borders between domestic and foreign issues believing that it will finally be absorbed.

Section ∏

Section II in The Press gives an in depth look onto the tasks that guides the press to be fully functioning in a democratic society. The first of 6 functions is the requisites of Democracy. this chapter is considered a continuation of the “Reporting for Civil Society” course and I believe the opinions of the author would never have looked this vivid without the course.

In this chapter the author James Curran introduces his vision of a media as a two-way channel of communication between governments and governed. The Watchdog role of the media to hold governments accountable is not enough anymore. The media needs to speak on occasions for society. This role can only be functional by allowing the principal organizations and groups in society to be heard and as the author says “where appropriate to be heeded”.

Thus “Civic Media” is important as it assists civil society organizations to be responsive, representative and effective. This civic media sector is really weak in Egypt although it can help to constitute social groups by promoting a shared sense of identity, mediate between their internal factions, assist in the definition of common concerns and present these to the wider world.

The social community media sector not only sheds the light on the society’s different perspectives but also help restore divisions within the same community. It gives the space to the new generation and puts pressure on leaders to accommodate the new force within its community. Thus it will help democratic societies to construct “a coherent political response” to its dilemmas. The author used Malcolm Maclean’s statements which I believe really expressive “communicate what it means to be poor among the rich, to be hungry among the well-fed, to be sick among the healthy…to be unheard, unheard, unheard…in a society noisy with messages.”

Curran then dubbed this as the role of “core media”. As core sector “holds the ring” to mediate between social groups, rather than to back one group. Core media can also mobilize public pressure for authority to act on the social groups benefits.

The media can also serve democracy by contributing to representative processes. They serve by providing a forum for debate. The conventions of “objective reporting” can reinforce this process. So it would be healthy to the media system to include partisan and adversarial media.

The value of adversarial media can be demonstrated by the way in which the rise of blogs challenged “pack journalism”. The online independents successfully challenged the news values of journalists working for the big media, and in effect helped to redraw the boundaries of what was acceptable in contemporary, mainstream politics in Egypt. This effect can be seen in the case of Egyptian police officers torturing inmates. The government was pressured to respond to the accusations by the lay of 200 police officers off the force. However, adversarial journalism can also have negative impact as it may lead to the circulation of libelous information that has no foundation in truth.

Curran also spoke of rival models of democracy which shows vividly in the American President’s usage of internet to communicate to his people which was really obvious during his election campaign and his latest the signing of the economic stimulus bill. The American presidency made a whole site to answer all questions on the Bill.

Moving to Chapter 8 of the book entitled “The Marketplace of Ideas” which portrays the second function.   I totally identified with this chapter because I have studied economics during my undergraduate years and I am a great believer in the concept of the “free market”. I agree with the authors that there is no difference between the two markets.

The aim from using the metaphor here is to reach the ultimate Truth. The authors quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as saying “The best test of the truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” This quote portrays the importance of different perspective to the truth. In this context journalists would less be concerned about Free speech than figuring out how to be heard.

The marketplace is in a way doubtful in modern media because there is an implied assumption that the public will be able to evaluate different messages. Another assumption is that elements of the truth-exist in those same competing messages.  The authors show how the society now is avoiding the marketplace of ideas. But that does not mean that the marketplace has stopped functioning. It is just a recession period.

The authors also show how media ownership has decreased and merge between newspapers and magazines continued rapidly. However, the media as a marketplace cannot be measured by its size and technological capacity.

The authors then concludes that the media is now split in a way that it is less possible to assume that the majority of the public shares the same information at any time.

The next function is the Agenda Setting function of the press. This chapter discusses how the press shapes the society’s perspectives on the topics of the day. The result is that the aspects of public affairs that are prominent in the press frequently become well-known among the public and among government officials. The best example is the approach taken by Aljazeera International their aim is to set the agenda by focusing on issues that is not discussed in other news networks.

There are levels to the Agenda setting. The first level is the agenda setting of objects. However, the second level which is the agenda level of attributes has a deeper effect on the public perspective.

The following chapter focuses on the function of the press which is the Watchdog role. The Watchdog role is in short what journalists do every day in reporting about public affairs matters. This chapter explored some of the factors that add to the vulnerability of the watchdog role by looking at it in historical and modern context.  The authors shed the light on the importance of watchdog journalism. The authors then portrayed how Newsrooms are often organized in a way that dates the founding of modern journalism. This organization led to problem in which reporters aim to cover only the White House or Congress or the Pentagon but most people do not want to cover  the regulatory agencies where things that affect people happen.

The authors also raised an important question which is “Who goes into Journalism today?”. The news business is now more professionalized so reporters come from upper class or middle class. The authors quote Russell Baker as saying “This is not a background likely to produce angry reporters and aggressive editors.” Instead reporters have a feeling of identification with the ruling classes. The authors also touched on the importance of all reporters being investigative watchdog reporters.

The last function is informing the public through discussion and debate. The authors’ conception here is that informed citizenship emphasizes information in use. Citizens are not required to have large amounts of public affairs information in their heads. The authors say that citizens are “cognitive misers” who operate by short term memory. So for citizens politics is a second hand experience lived through the stories of journalism. This shows how framing and objectivity are really important because they shape the kind impact the news can have on citizens.

The press ch.15 &23

Chapter 15 of The Press focuses on the first Amendment to the US constitution: “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

The authors believe that what makes this Amendment unique is “the early rejection of seditious libel, the revulsion for licensing of the press and for prior restraint; the deep reluctance to punish speakers based on their viewpoints.”

The words of the first Amendment have the ability to prevent Congress from “censoring or controlling newsgathering activities and media content”.

The authors define those who believe the First Amendment must be read literally as First Amendment “absolutists”. They maintain that no government interest can justify abridging or punishing the exercise of press or speech freedoms.

The authors however believe that Absolutists still have to draw a defining line between expression as a speech or press activity and behavior that does not “Absolutists may argue that laws punishing obscene magazines are unconstitutional, they are likely to find that putting an obscene image on a T-shirt and wearing it to a demonstration is punishable because it amounts to conduct not speech.”

The authors showed how the absolutist view proved to be too one-dimensional as the speech and press rights were conflicting with other societal interests and “constitutional guarantees such as due process and equal protection were also subject to balancing.”

Other thinkers who played major roles in the development of First Amendment freedoms in the twentieth century believed that it was necessary to identify the values or interests that these freedoms would advance. That notion found its first judicial voice in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s opinion “the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas,” and “that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”

Another model that appeared in the same era is the notion that First Amendment rights exist in order to “enable citizens to pursue their intellectual desires and to develop as individuals through the expression of their views and beliefs” as Brandeis puts it “They valued liberty as both an end and as means.”

The authors use the writings of philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn who was the architect of a much modern First Amendment theory. In his book Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government, Meiklejohn laid out a vision of democracy that says that the most important public official may well be the ordinary citizen arguing that democracy earned its authority from constant scrutiny and supervision of the governors by the governed. So the citizens need as much protection as the government need from defamation. Supporters of regulations turned their focus on not the concerns of the speaker but the interests of the audience, thus giving birth to the “listeners’ rights” model of the First Amendment.

The authors used Watergate as an example “reporters were to be permitted access to people and institutions denied to the public at large and granted special dispensation from laws of general applicability when such laws would harm newsgathering or publishing activities.”

In this case, it was the people “right to know”. Eventually a federal reporter’s privilege was recognized in many higher judicial circuits and by the authority given through other decrees in many states. However, the necessity of the right to know met with “little success in significantly extending press freedoms”.

The chapter ends with the history of Libel and how truth has become an absolute defense. And in 1988 the Supreme Court declared that “even outrageous and deliberate attacks on public figures could not be the basis of a lawsuit claiming libel or infliction of emotional distress, unless the plaintiff could demonstrate both falsity an actual malice.”

The authors then discuss the people’s right to be let alone which was not articulated until 1890. And the end with the latest to have an effect of the rights of press which is September 11 “perceived threats to nation’s security have resulted in increasing restrictions on access to information posing profound challenges to the press and its ability to keep the public informed on matters of concern to the nation.”

Moving to chapter 23 entitled the legacy of autonomy in American journalism. The theme of this chapter is “the state can be both an enemy and a friend of speech that it can do terrible things to undermine democracy but some wonderful things to enhance it as well.”

The chapter introduces the important role that individual autonomy plays in the principles and practices of the press in the United States.

This chapter takes a tour into Owen Fiss’s book, a member of Yale faculty, which is called The Irony of Free Speech. Fiss develops his thesis through analysis of recent Supreme Court cases arguing that the first Amendment “exists to safeguard popular sovereignty, not individual self expression it serves as an instrument of democracy not as a tool that individuals can use to promote themselves and their personal interests.”

The authors tried to draw a line to differentiate between freedom of speech and the freedom to speak arguing that the Constitution protects the freedom to speak only because it contributes in some substantive way to the freedom of speech. And they translate what Mickeljohn said “ what is essential is not that everyone shall speak but that everything worth saying shall be said,” as “ the common needs of all members of the body politic and has comparatively no concern for the needs of individuals to express themselves.”

The authors believe that journalism’s response to the cases of Red Lion and especially Tornillo puts less stress on “press freedom that places a premium on individual and institutional autonomy.”

The authors portrays how the boundaries designed to secure autonomy to journalism work just as effectively to undermine autonomy for journalism through the romanticized view of journalism “journalists assert their independence and autonomy by establishing sometimes literally but usually metaphorically certain boundaries for the profession.”

And the authors end with the journalism independence of judgment citing newspaper publisher John Cowles in a 1951 essay where he pointed that “less competition not more might improve the quality of journalism by safeguarding a newsroom’s independence of judgment.”

The press ch.19

Chapter 19 of The Press, this chapter was written by William Prochnau who is a former national correspondent for the Washington Post and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. He worked as an international reporter from Vietnam for several months in 1965 and 1967.  Such work has given him experience on how to report on military.

Prochnau first sheds the light on quoting military leaders which is obviously not an easy task bearing in mind the military attitudes and personalities which produce a quote like “the chick got in the way,”. As part of an academic book the author focuses more on the history of military reporting on the United States starting with the Mexican civil war and ending with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Through this journey he did not miss Vietnam the living room war in which he discussed the three myths of the War. Myth one which is the first reporters of the war were antiwar activists and they set the tone to the whole war which leads to the third myth that negative media coverage lost the war . And the second myth which is the media-military relationship was ruthless.
Prochnau also sheds light on the CNN effect during the Gulf War which is the ability of 24/7 news networks “to drive American foreign policy by public outcry”. He made reference to the new “know nothing Shout TV” phenomenon which started in 2005.

Concluding the author discussed how media has become a strategic enabler to leaders and war fighters.

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