A study focused on how the broadcasting and advertising industries dealt publicly, through the medium of the trade journal, with political pressures shortly after the end of the Second World War. Was blacklisting and the political screening of talent acknowledged in the trade press? If so, did the publications approve or disapprove of the methods…

Since the 1974 Supreme Court dicta in "Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.," many courts have held that statement of opinion is constitutionally protected. However, statements that appear to be opinion based on undisclosed facts or knowledge not generally known to the public can be an exception. For instance, courts have protected specific…

Investigative journalists long have had an adversarial relationship with powerful institutions and those in public office, stemming from the "righteously indignant" reporters of the early nineteenth century penny presses who guarded the interests of the public. Currently, investigative journalists are in a difficult position if they have…

Intended to summarize the ideals underlying the struggle for freedom of the press and to reinforce the basic Constitutional principles upon which the United States functions, this collection of quotations reflects the beliefs of prominent people throughout history who have championed press freedom, as well as the ideas of some who have opposed it.…

Questionnaires were sent to 114 of the 228 editorial page editors at newspapers in the United States with daily circulations greater than 50,000 for a study that compared (1) the editor-publisher relationship existing at chains to that found at independent papers, and (2) the 1984 presidential endorsements made by chains to those by independent…

The Office of Censorship's struggle to keep journalists from revealing the development of the first atomic bomb, the sites where the development was taking place, and the fact that the bomb might be available for use in the war, was desperate and in many ways heroic. Soon after it was created on December 19, 1941, the office issued a voluntary…

Exclusion of the press from the first days of the American invasion of Grenada dramatically brought into focus the fundamental conflict between the military's need for secrecy and the press's need to publish information. From the viewpoint of the press, the decision to exclude reporters from the island until the third day of the invasion denied…

Between 1964 and 1968, "U. S. News and World Report" engaged in symbolic discourse with its readership through its coverage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "U. S. News" faced a dilemma in the mingling of King's force as a symbol with the power exerted by the egalitarian principles that Gunnar Myrdal identified as components of…

To answer the questions of whether the pioneer effort and subsequent differences in lifestyles affected sex-role stereotyping in newspapers in 1885 and whether a widely perceived difference in role expectation was evident in the popular writing of the times, a study examined the differences in sex roles reflected in popular journalistic portrayals…

Noting that covering the United States Department of Education can pose special problems for journalists, this report provides information about the operations of the department and notes the strengths and weaknesses of information produced by and about it. The first three sections of the report discuss the current political atmosphere at the…

Two unrelated studies investigated issues in newspaper journalism. The first, a replication of an earlier study, examined whether the priority given by newspapers to reporting local news was warranted. Respondents in three areas of the country were asked to rate their interest in various types of news on a five-point scale. Results indicated that…

A four-month investigation was conducted of media coverage of two controversies involving government officials in Detroit, Michigan. Data were gathered from three sources: journalists involved in covering the stories, people involved in the stories, and the printed stories. Using public documents, the history of one of the controversies was…

Prepared by members of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Committee of the Associated Press Managing Editors (AMPE), this collection of articles deals with a variety of issues concerning freedom of the press. Following a list of members of the committee, the major articles in the collection are: (1) "Massive Libel Suits Threaten Freedom of All…

A number of scholars have found that wartime conditions often bring about conflict between the press and the military. This study documents the various incidents between the United States Army and various Mexican and United States newspaper editors that led to at least ten cases of newspaper suppression, the occasional use of prior censorship, and…

The United States is a major exporter but a minor importer of films and television programs; this situation has been described as a one-way flow of information from the United States to other nations. Although the official United States position is one of dedication to the two-way flow of communication, the "majority" view is that the…