As the chief source of information for many people and a key revenue stream for the country's broadcast conglomerates, local television news has grown from a curiosity into a powerful journalistic and cultural force. In A Newscast for the Masses, Tim Kiska examines the evolution of television news in Detroit, from its beginnings in the late 1940s, when television was considered a "wild young medium," to the early 1980s, when cable television permanently altered the broadcast landscape. Kiska shows how the local news, which was initially considered a poor substitute for respectable print journalism, became the cornerstone of television programming and the public's preferred news source. Kiska begins his study in 1947 with the first Detroit television broadcast, made by WWJ-TV. Owned by the Evening News Association, the same company that owned the Detroit News, WWJ developed a credible broadcast news operation as a cross-promotional vehicle for the newspaper. Yet by the late 1960s WWJ was unseated by newcomers WXYZ-TV and WJBK-TV, whose superior coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots lured viewers away from WWJ. WXYZ-TV would eventually become the most powerful news outlet in Detroit with the help of its cash-rich parent company, the American Broadcasting Corporation, and its use of sophisticated survey research and advertising techniques to grow its news audience. Though critics tend to deride the sensationalism and showmanship of local television news, Kiska demonstrates that over the last several decades newscasts have effectively tailored their content to the demands of the viewing public and, as a result, have become the most trusted source of information for the average American and the most lucrative source of profit for television networks. A Newscast for the Masses is based on extensive interviews with journalists who participated in the development of television in Detroit and careful research into the files of the McHugh & Hoffman consulting firm, which used social science techniques to discern the television viewing preferences of metro Detroiters. Anyone interested in television history or journalism will appreciate this detailed and informative study.

A landmark narrative history of American media that puts race at the center of the story. Here is a new, sweeping narrative history of American news media that puts race at the center of the story. From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies. The writing is fast-paced, story-driven, and replete with memorable portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, heroes and villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system—such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system, like Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a remarkable national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos ’n’ Andy off the air. Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.

In an age when young people may confuse online chatter with legitimate news, Navigating the News is the first textbook designed to show students how to recognize credible reporting and how real journalists perform their jobs. The book begins with the basics of how to critically assess news stories, then covers what to look for in everything from community news and crime reporting to business, political and investigative coverage. More than 50 professional journalists share insights on how they gather, edit and report news, and discuss what critical audiences should expect from their news coverage. Students learn how to analyze complex topics including science, environmental and education news, and a series of chapters covers how to approach news from different parts of the world. Navigating the News is aimed at general audiences, not just journalism or communication majors. Given the importance and timeliness of the subject, this book could easily be the core text for general education classes on news and media literacy. The trend toward teaching young people how to understand and assess news is gaining momentum at universities everywhere. The book is written in a clear, straightforward style to engage students who may be getting their first taste of adult issues and concerns. Even students who have avoided "serious" news growing up will gain tools for understanding, assessing and processing coverage of complex stories. The mission of this text is simple: If students don't recognize what real news is, Navigating the News is going to teach them.

Mass media in the late nineteenth century was full of news from Mars. In the wake of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 1877 discovery of enigmatic dark, straight lines on the red planet, astronomers and the public at large vigorously debated the possibility that it might be inhabited. As rivalling scientific practitioners looked to marshal allies and sway public opinion—through newspapers, periodicals, popular books, exhibitions, and encyclopaedias—they exposed disagreements over how the discipline of astronomy should be organized and how it should establish acceptable conventions of discourse. News from Mars provides a new account of this extraordinary episode in the history of astronomy, revealing how major transformations in astronomical practice across Britain and America were inextricably tied up with popular scientific culture and a transatlantic news economy that enabled knowledge to travel. As Joshua Nall argues, astronomers were journalists, too, eliding practice with communication in consequential ways. As writers and editors, they played a pivotal role in the emergence of a “new astronomy” dedicated to the study of the physical constitution and life history of celestial objects, blurring harsh distinctions between those who produced esoteric knowledge and those who disseminated it.

Do you want to use R to tell stories? This book was written for you—whether you already know some R or have never coded before. Most R texts focus only on programming or statistical theory. Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism gives you ideas, tools, and techniques for incorporating data and visualizations into your narratives. You’ll see step by step how to: Analyze airport flight delays, restaurant inspections, and election results Map bank locations, median incomes, and new voting districts Compare campaign contributions to final election results Extract data from PDFs Whip messy data into shape for analysis Scrape data from a website Create graphics ranging from simple, static charts to interactive visualizations for the Web If you work or plan to work in a newsroom, government office, non-profit policy organization, or PR office, Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism will help you use R in your world. This book has a companion website with code, links to additional resources, and searchable tables by function and task. Sharon Machlis is the author of Computerworld’s Beginner’s Guide to R, host of InfoWorld’s Do More With R video screencast series, admin for the R for Journalists Google Group, and is well known among Twitter users who follow the #rstats hashtag. She is Director of Editorial Data and Analytics at IDG Communications (parent company of Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World and Macworld, among others) and a frequent speaker at data journalism and R conferences.

Lies and inaccurate information are as old as humanity, but never before have they been so easy to spread. Each moment of every day, the Internet and broadcast media purvey misinformation, either deliberately or accidentally, to a mass audience on subjects ranging from politics to consumer goods to science and medicine, among many others. Because misinformation now has the potential to affect behavior on a massive scale, it is urgently important to understand how it works and what can be done to mitigate its harmful effects. Misinformation and Mass Audiences brings together evidence and ideas from communication research, public health, psychology, political science, environmental studies, and information science to investigate what constitutes misinformation, how it spreads, and how best to counter it. The expert contributors cover such topics as whether and to what extent audiences consciously notice misinformation, the possibilities for audience deception, the ethics of satire in journalism and public affairs programming, the diffusion of rumors, the role of Internet search behavior, and the evolving efforts to counteract misinformation, such as fact-checking programs. The first comprehensive social science volume exploring the prevalence and consequences of, and remedies for, misinformation as a mass communication phenomenon, Misinformation and Mass Audiences will be a crucial resource for students and faculty researching misinformation, policymakers grappling with questions of regulation and prevention, and anyone concerned about this troubling, yet perhaps unavoidable, dimension of current media systems.

That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the details, and competitors' products. But in All the News That's Fit to Sell, economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens. Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news, and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic on news judgments. This is the first book to develop an economic theory of news, analyze evidence across a wide range of media markets on how incentives affect news content, and offer policy conclusions. Media bias, for instance, was long a staple of the news. Hamilton's analysis of newspapers from 1870 to 1900 reveals how nonpartisan reporting became the norm. A hundred years later, some partisan elements reemerged as, for example, evening news broadcasts tried to retain young female viewers with stories aimed at their (Democratic) political interests. Examination of story selection on the network evening news programs from 1969 to 1998 shows how cable competition, deregulation, and ownership changes encouraged a shift from hard news about politics toward more soft news about entertainers. Hamilton concludes by calling for lower costs of access to government information, a greater role for nonprofits in funding journalism, the development of norms that stress hard news reporting, and the defining of digital and Internet property rights to encourage the flow of news. Ultimately, this book shows that by more fully understanding the economics behind the news, we will be better positioned to ensure that the news serves the public good.

The book covers following topics: UNIT I – Introduction Meaning and Definition of Journalism, Ethics of Journalism - Canons of journalism- Sports Ethics and Sportsmanship - Reporting Sports Events. National and International Sports News Agencies. UNIT II – Sports Bulletin Concept of Sports Bulletin: Journalism and sports education - Structure of sports bulletin - Compiling a bulletin - Types of bulletin - Role of Journalism in the Field of Physical Education: Sports as an integral part of Physical Education - Sports organization and sports journalism - General news reporting and sports reporting. UNIT III – Mass Media Mass Media in Journalism: Radio and T.V. Commentary - Running commentary on the radio - Sports expert's comments. Role of Advertisement in Journalism. Sports Photography: Equipment-Editing-Publishing. UNIT IV – Report Writing on Sports Brief review of Olympic Games, Asian Games, Common Wealth Games World Cup, National Games and Indian Traditional Games. Preparing report of an Annual Sports Meet for Publication in Newspaper. Organization of Press Meet. UNIT V – Journalism Sports organization and Sports Journalism - General news reporting and sports reporting. Methods of editing a Sports report. Evaluation of Reported News. Interview with and elite Player and Coach.

This Handbook encapsulates the intellectual history of mass media ethics over the past twenty-five years. Chapters serve as a summary of existing research and thinking in the field, as well as setting agenda items for future research. Key features include: up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of media ethics, one of the hottest topics in the media community 'one-stop shopping' for historical and current research in media ethics experienced, top-tier editors, advisory board, and contributors. It will be an essential reference on media ethics theory and research for scholars, graduate students, and researchers in media, mass communication, and journalism.

Since September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many television viewers in the United States have become familiar with Al Jazeera as offering an alternative take on events from that presented by mainstream U.S. media, as well as disseminating anti-American invective. Westerners have tended toward simplistic views of Arab newspapers, radio, and television, assuming that they are all under government control and that freedom of press is non-existent. William A. Rugh, a long time observer of the Arab mass media, offers a more nuanced picture of the Arab press as it relates to the political situation in the Arab world today. Although governmental influence over the media is stronger in the Middle East than in Europe or the United States, Rugh argues that there is more diversity in the Arab media than most people in the West realize. In reality, the Arab media are coming to reflect the diversity and wide range of opinions of those within the Arab world itself. In particular, the advent of privately owned Arab satellite television in the 1990s has led to significant liberalization of the media throughout the region. Rugh concludes that a democracy of ideas and voices is slowly growing in the Arab world, and he remains guardedly optimistic about the positive role the Arab media can play in processes of democratization and nation-building.