The police-press relationship has often been viewed negatively by law enforcement officials, who complain about the media's current widespread use of young, inexperienced reporters on the police beat, which the officials believe indicates that editors have de-emphasized the importance of coverage of police activities. This practice was examined to…

By reviewing personal correspondence, biographies, newspaper coverage of the 1940s, and interviews, this survey examines Wendell Willkie's relations with the press in general and with publishers John Cowles and Gardner (Mike) Cowles in particular. Divided into four parts, the survey begins with a review of the correspondence between Willkie and…

A national survey of daily newspaper editors was conducted in May 1986 for the purpose of determining editors' perceptions of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. The study examined how well known Robertson is to editors, how they perceive him politically and personally, and why he is perceived by newspaper editors in the way that he is. A total…

General interest, scientific, and religious periodicals responded to the theory of evolution in 1925 with the same opinions but slanted their coverage to appeal to different readerships. "Scientific American" and "Current History" differed only stylistically in their coverage of the "Australopithecus africanus"…

Despite the pervasive presence of popular music in society and the continued controversy over its effects on children and teen-agers, the recording industry has received only fragmentary (though increasing) attention from mass media researchers. To gain evidence of the level of literacy of today's music critics, a study examined the tastes,…

A study examined how four news magazines in North America and Western Europe covered British public reaction to the 1982 Falklands War. The news magazines--similar in format--represented four nations with varying degrees of closeness to Great Britain: the United States ("Time"), Canada ("Macleans"), West Germany…

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…

This paper narrates the history of a young printer, John Prentiss, who established the New Hampshire Sentinel in 1799--a paper which remains a community newspaper today. Examples of writing from Prentiss's training and experience explain why he was able to survive in newspaper publishing when others failed. Acknowledging that the United States…

This pamphlet was prepared to teach certified public accountants (CPAs) the skill of oral communication, in order to prepare them for an increasing number of news interviews on financial and business events. It stresses that the best interests of both CPAs and the general public are served if relations with the press are marked by friendliness and…

This paper examines the facts of the Knops case, a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that deals with freedom of the press, underground newspapers, and reporter's privilege (not to reveal a news source), and surveys the news coverage of the Knops case to evaluate the stance of the Wisconsin press in regard to reporter's privilege. The paper…

"Freedom's Journal," the first newspaper published by blacks in the United States, originated in 1827 and lasted for two years. This article examines the form and content of the journal and considers some of the previous research on it. The article states that the journal contained the first report of a lynching that was published in the United…

The purpose of this paper is: (1) to present and analyze the most important laws, along with the most prominent court cases, that affected free expression and the press in post-junta Greece (1974-1977), and (2) to describe the media system of Greece for the same period in order to offer a better perspective on the Greek press in those crucial…

Objective news reporting, in which reporters present but do not evaluate facts, has certain negative consequences. When the convention of journalistic objectivity was adopted around 1900, journalists moved from interpreting and analyzing events to being relatively passive links between sources and audiences. The most troublesome convention of…

ARTICLES FROM NEWSPAPERS IN ARKANSAS, DELAWARE, FLORIDA, GEORGIA, KENTUCKY, MISSISSIPPI, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, TEXAS, AND VIRGINIA ARE PRESENTED. THESE ARTICLES PROTEST AGAINST VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH. THE MAJOR ARGUMENTS ARE THAT--UNITED STATES' NATIONAL ESTEEM AT HOME AND ABROAD IS BEING LESSENED. UNITED STATES LAW COURTS ARE…

Presidential candidates in the United States tend to seek consensus rather than to try to discover new answers to problems and to convince voters that they should be elected to implement those answers. Reporters in the mass media emphasize objectivity and fairness in their reporting. This emphasis produces an intense interest in the…