History has placed the stamp of approval on the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of the Vietnam War. If WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange is another Daniel Ellsberg, then it is possible the website's disclosures will be viewed over time as similarly in the public interest. A classroom discussion on the release of…

Ethnocentrism, elitism, and news distance are seen as more important in determining foreign news content in Israeli and American newspapers than physical distance between nations. (RB)

Examines the official Soviet attitude toward the roles of the United States and Israel in the Middle East conflict, as depicted in caricatures published in 44 important Soviet newspapers. (GW)

Editorials in four prestigious American papers and two Filipino dailies addressing the 1986 election and revolution in the Philippines were compared for differences. Four hypotheses were tested: (1) that in treatment of the Philippines, editorials in the U.S. national prestige press would place more emphasis than do those in the Filipino…

Third World nations' calls for a new international information order are discussed and the responses of Western governments and in particular of the United States government to those calls are analyzed in this paper. The paper notes the Third World countries' preferences for a more restrictive flow of information across borders, their limited…

Presents a qualitative analysis of Soviet media coverage of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1986, showing that several familiar themes, from unpopular guerrillas to national security, are used to justify the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Compares Soviet press coverage of Afghanistan with U.S. coverage of El Salvador, revealing several parallels. (ARH)

To provide a better understanding of the depictions of countries by the news media, it is necessary to determine whether similar portraits are presented in all types of reporting or whether there are different, or even contradictory, portrayals of foreign countries within individual newspapers considered nationally influential. A study examined…

Although much is known about how governments and major media organizations stand on some world press problems, some important actors in the debate--small- and medium-size newspapers in the United States--have been ignored. The editors of these newspapers are gatekeepers who, like their counterparts on large elite newspapers, play a fundamental…