The career of James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's older brother, provides a case study in the use of polemics for a free press. A printer who actively courted controversy, Franklin found it necessary to use an unusual variety of strategies and justifications to evade or overcome potential legal, religious, and economic restraints. He demonstrated…

Established in the early 1970s to respond to complaints about and from the media, the four press councils in Canada (the Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Windsor Press Councils) have been accepted, but not overwhelmingly so by either newspapers or the public. The success and acceptability of the councils seems to be related to the kinds of complaints…

A study examined the news coverage given by the "Industrial Worker" to the San Diego free speech fight of 1912, the last of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union's free speech fights on the West Coast. The "Worker," a publication of the IWW, devoted columns of coverage to that conflict in the form of reports, letters,…

Economic change in China is coming about through wide-ranging economic reforms, is taking place at an unprecedented pace, and is affecting the lives of many of the inhabitants of the world's most populous nation. However, the attempts to reform the political process have been slow, like the attempts to reform the Chinese press. The Chinese press…