This paper examines treatment by the U.S. press of the Mexican, Cuban, and Chilean revolutions from a historical perspective, both using original research and synthesizing the research of others. On balance, the U.S. media have reported or commented on Latin American social revolutions mainly by exploiting sensation and ridicule. Economic…

The agenda-setting concept in mass communication asserts that the news media determine what people will include or exclude in their cognition of public events. Findings in uses and gratification research provide the foundation for this concept: an initial focus on people's needs, particularly the need for information. The agenda-setting concept…

This paper describes an episode in the history of journalism that reveals a continuing tension in news reporting. Dating from the invention of the telegraph in the late nineteenth century, news reports have been increasingly patterned after either a "scientific" or a "literary" model. The scientific report is based on irreducible facts, high-speed…

Drawing from the findings of a lengthy study of international news conducted by the American Committee of the International Association for Mass Communication Research at the request of UNESCO, this paper provides information on the system by which news is distributed around the world, on the international news content of four Western news…