The first study of the career of H. W. Massingham, an outstanding journalist early in the twentieth century when editors were often ranked equal in significance with ministers of state. Massingham featured most significantly in the history of the press as editor of the Star, the Daily Chronicle and finally the Nation. Professor Havighurst demonstrates Missingham's central position by arguing that he played a more important role in the formation of 'progressivism' in the period 1888-92 than even the Fabian Society. Massingham's clash with the Fabians is examined, along with his gradual disillusionment with Rosebery, his influence upon important questions of public opinion, his connection and his subsequent contact with Ramsay MacDonald. The influence of journalists is frequently alleged but is often unproved; this biography provides a detailed assessment of the impact of a major journalist and is a complete and fascinating account of an extremely important political figure. It will appeal to specialists in political and social history and the history of journalism.

John Reed was one of America's most dynamic journalists during the World War I decade. An unabashed advocate for the working class and an outspoken critic of capitalism, Reed was a star reporter before his relentless crusade turned him into a target of the U.S. government. Reed set the standard for descriptive writing at labor strikes in New Jersey and Colorado, in Mexico while riding with Pancho Villa, in Germany's trenches, and in Russia. America had no shortage of rebels, socialists, anarchists and revolutionaries at that time--but with his outsized personality and command of language and audiences, Reed may have been the most dangerous rebel of them all. Neither adversaries nor allies expected Reed to go the distance (or to Russia) with his convictions. He seemed to enjoy life and merriment too much to sacrifice everything for a second American revolution. But they all underestimated the anger that fueled him, the memory of a father who sacrificed his reputation to fight white-collar crime. This career biography details Reed's extraordinary decade before his death at age 32--a chaotic period of constant movement and remarkable accomplishment--while placing him in context among those who shaped him and touching upon the people with whom he worked.

When a nineteen-year-old member of a Black Muslim cult assassinated Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey in 2007—the most shocking killing of a journalist in the United States in thirty years—the question was, Why? “I just wanted to be a good soldier, a strong soldier,” the killer told police. A strong soldier for whom? Killing the Messenger is a searing work of narrative nonfiction that explores one of the most blatant attacks on the First Amendment and free speech in American history and the small Black Muslim cult that carried it out. Award-winning investigative reporter Thomas Peele examines the Black Muslim movement from its founding in the early twentieth century by a con man who claimed to be God, to the height of power of the movement’s leading figure, Elijah Muhammad, to how the great-grandson of Texas slaves reinvented himself as a Muslim leader in Oakland and built the violent cult that the young gunman eventually joined. Peele delves into how charlatans exploited poor African Americans with tales from a religion they falsely claimed was Islam and the years of bloodshed that followed, from a human sacrifice in Detroit to police shootings of unarmed Muslims to the horrible backlash of racism known as the “zebra murders,” and finally to the brazen killing of Chauncey Bailey to stop him from publishing a newspaper story. Peele establishes direct lines between the violent Black Muslim organization run by Yusuf Bey in Oakland and the evangelicalism of the early prophets and messengers of the Nation of Islam. Exposing the roots of the faith, Peele examines its forerunner, the Moorish Science Temple of America, which in the 1920s and ’30s preached to migrants from the South living in Chicago and Detroit ghettos that blacks were the world’s master race, tricked into slavery by white devils. In spite of the fantastical claims and hatred at its core, the Nation of Islam was able to build a following by appealing to the lack of identity common in slave descendants. In Oakland, Yusuf Bey built a cult through a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery, beating and raping dozens of women he claimed were his wives and fathering more than forty children. Yet, Bey remained a prominent fixture in the community, and police looked the other way as his violent soldiers ruled the streets. An enthralling narrative that combines a rich historical account with gritty urban reporting, Killing the Messenger is a mesmerizing story of how swindlers and con men abused the tragedy of racism and created a radical religion of bloodshed and fear that culminated in a journalist’s murder. THOMAS PEELE is a digital investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group and the Chauncey Bailey Project. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. His many honors include the Investigative Reporters and Editors Tom Renner Award for his reporting on organized crime, and the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. He lives in Northern California.

A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.

This edited volume offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical role of radical journalism, its present iterations, and plans for the future of a journalism that is committed to liberatory movements and politics. At a time of profound crisis and stagnation for mainstream journalism, radical journalism seems to be riding a wave. New outlets, including those – like Jacobin – with a global reach, have sprung up, presenting a new generation of unapologetically progressive publications with an emancipatory agenda. Understanding the role and place of radical journalism becomes even more urgent given the current political climate in a (post) pandemic world with heightened inequalities and intensified pauperisation. Drawing on contributions from leading academics, this collection considers: • How new outlets fit in the genealogy of (radical) journalism and what their flourishing can tell us about the present and future of emancipatory politics and the role of the radical journalist; • What these new forms and publications mean for mainstream journalism and its persisting problems of financial sustainability and professional journalistic labour; • Important challenges presented by, for example, the resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism and the mainstreaming of the far right; • Essential questions of what radical journalism looks like today, what forms it takes or should take, and what its future might be. Radical Journalism is recommended reading for advanced students and journalists working at the intersection of journalism, politics, and sociology.

Writing about Texas, Mexico, and Texan-Mexican relations for over four decades, Dick J. Reavis is one of the most poignant political voices of Texas—not as a politician, though his writings are infused with politics, but as a candid, unsentimental, probing, journalist. Reavis has worked as a reporter, features author, and staff writer (San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer, San Antonio Light), as a Senior Editor of Texas Monthly, and as a professor of journalism (North Carolina State University). He has authored six books and translated two from Spanish. Throughout his award-winning career, he has returned consistently to investigate the lives of everyday Texans, insistently challenging prevailing political assumptions and mythologies. It was precisely this commitment that prompted him to investigate the federal government’s siege of the Branch Davidians in 1993 outside of Waco, TX, which led to his best-known work, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (1995), a book that challenged government accounts and mainstream media. This anthology demonstrates the range of his writings, which include investigations of Mexican guerillas and Texas biker-gangs, the struggles of urban day-laborers and of undocumented immigrants in rural areas, the politics of Texas radicals during the Civil Rights movement, and the activities of the Klan and other far right groups across the state, to identify but a few. This collection of Reavis’s writings brings into focus the voice and political commitments of this critical, contemporary, Texas writer.

The sixth edition of this title is a guide for all those involved with the production and consumption of the media. It includes up-to-date analysis of new media and legislation, New Labour conservatism and coverage of Scottish and Welsh devolution.

Political activists with radical ideas often find themselves shut out of the mainstream news media; this book offers insight into radical politics and mass media and then moves on to describe practical strategies for breaking into the mainstream. [back cover].

“Reveals a political trend that threatens both our form of government and our species.” - Timothy Snyder, author of ON TYRANNY "Riveting.... Want to understand how so many Americans turned against truth? Read this book." Nancy Maclean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today. In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.