American Journalism and International Relations: Foreign Correspondence from the Early Republic to the Digital Era (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107031951)

American Journalism and International Relations argues that the American press' disengagement from world affairs has critical repercussions for American foreign policy. Giovanna Dell'Orto shows that discourses created, circulated, and maintained through the media mold opinions about the world and shape foreign policy parameters. This book is a history of U.S. foreign correspondence from the 1840s to the present, relying on more than 2,000 news articles and twenty major world events, from the 1848 European revolutions to the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Americans' perceptions of other nations, combined with pervasive and enduring understandings of the United States' role in global politics, act as constraints on policies. Dell'Orto finds that reductive media discourse (as seen during the 1967 War in the Middle East or Afghanistan in the 1980s) has a negative effect on policy, whereas correspondence grounded in events (such as during the Japanese attack on Shanghai in the 1930s or the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991) fosters effective leadership and realistic assessments.

Author: Giovanna Dell'orto
ISBN-10: 1107031958
ISBN-13: 9781107031951
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/29/2013
Pages: 296
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2013