The thesis of this book is that the news media use bias, distortion, and censorship to manipulate public opinion and preserve the "status quo." It is composed of numerous illustrations of "failures" on the part of the mass media to present an accurate and complete picture of reality and to present minority or unpopular viewpoints. (SH)

A study examined newspaper coverage of the United States' withdrawal from Unesco to determine whether the public was given a balanced picture of the issues involved and to examine the degree of impartiality of the coverage of one specific issue, the New World Information Order. The study analyzed reports that appeared in American daily newspapers…

This book arose from a 1976 conference on school desegregation and the mass media. In it participants address critical legal and political issues and explore aspects of the coverage of desegregation by the news media. Five desegregation specialists describe and analyze court decisions, congressional actions, studies, plans and changes which have…

This reviewer feels that the CBS television special "Is Anyone Out There Learning?" overemphasized problems and offered few useful solutions. All articles in this journal issue comment on this CBS News program, aired in August, 1978. (SJL)

This critique of the television special "Is Anyone Out There Learning?" emphasizes three points: (1) CBS presented its own biases disguised as research; (2) television cannot teach literacy; and (3) CBS made education the scapegoat for our social crisis. All articles in this journal issue concern this television program. (SJL)

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…

Asks secondary students to compare the real Scopes trial to the fictionalized version presented in the movie "Inherit the Wind," with their textbook and Web site versions. Intends for students to learn about key facts, arguments, and outcomes of the trial and to understand significant individuals' impacts on the trial's events and…

A study of 4,692 news stories from Egyptian, Algerian, and Tunisian electronic and print news media was conducted to see how state-controlled media reflected government policy changes following the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the subsequent diplomatic break between Egypt and Arab League nations. The study found that the three controlled…

Much has been written about the power of media to influence the public through instruments of advertising and a variety of venues (Considine & Haley, 1999; Cortes, 2000; Kilbourne, 1999). In this chapter, the author has chosen to use a singular media focus--news--to support the critical importance of teaching media literacy skills to students. She…

Because public opinion polls have become important sources of information for legislators and politicians, public opinion pollsters should carefully consider the relationships between gender wording of polling questions, measurement errors, and validity and generalizability of survey findings. Findings from numerous research projects indicate that…

The mass media teach whether or not mediamakers intend to or realize it, and users learn from the media whether or not they try or are even aware of it. This means all of the media, including newspapers, magazines, movies, television, radio, and the new cyberspace media serve as informal yet omnipresent nonschool textbooks. This raises an…