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Author: Helen Thomas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416548610
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
In the course of more than sixty years spent covering Washington politics, Helen Thomas has witnessed a raft of fundamental changes in the way news is gathered and reported. Gone are the days of frequent firsthand contact with the president. Now, the press sees the president only at tightly controlled and orchestrated press conferences. In addition, Thomas sees a growing -- and alarming -- reluctance among reporters to question government spokesmen and probe for the truth. The result has been a wholesale failure by journalists to fulfill what is arguably their most vital role in contemporary American life -- to be the watchdogs of democracy. Today's journalists, according to Thomas, have become subdued, compromised lapdogs. Here, the legendary journalist and bestselling author delivers a hard-hitting manifesto on the precipitous decline in the quality and ethics of political reportage -- and issues a clarion call for change. Thomas confronts some of the most significant issues of the day, including the jailing of reporters, the conservative swing in television news coverage, and the administration's increased insistence on "managed" news. But she is most emphatic about reporters' failure to adequately question President George W. Bush and White House spokesmen about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and on subjects ranging from homeland security to the economy. This, she insists, was a dire lapse. Drawing on her peerless knowledge of journalism, Washington politics, and nine presidential administrations, as well as frank interviews with leading journalists past and present, Thomas provides readers with a rich historical perspective on the roots of American journalism, the circumstances attending the rise and fall of its golden age, and the nature and consequences of its current shortcomings. The result is a powerful, eye-opening discourse on the state of political reportage -- as well as a welcome and inspiring demand for meaningful and lasting reform.
Author: Helen Thomas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416548610
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Get Book Here
Book Description
In the course of more than sixty years spent covering Washington politics, Helen Thomas has witnessed a raft of fundamental changes in the way news is gathered and reported. Gone are the days of frequent firsthand contact with the president. Now, the press sees the president only at tightly controlled and orchestrated press conferences. In addition, Thomas sees a growing -- and alarming -- reluctance among reporters to question government spokesmen and probe for the truth. The result has been a wholesale failure by journalists to fulfill what is arguably their most vital role in contemporary American life -- to be the watchdogs of democracy. Today's journalists, according to Thomas, have become subdued, compromised lapdogs. Here, the legendary journalist and bestselling author delivers a hard-hitting manifesto on the precipitous decline in the quality and ethics of political reportage -- and issues a clarion call for change. Thomas confronts some of the most significant issues of the day, including the jailing of reporters, the conservative swing in television news coverage, and the administration's increased insistence on "managed" news. But she is most emphatic about reporters' failure to adequately question President George W. Bush and White House spokesmen about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and on subjects ranging from homeland security to the economy. This, she insists, was a dire lapse. Drawing on her peerless knowledge of journalism, Washington politics, and nine presidential administrations, as well as frank interviews with leading journalists past and present, Thomas provides readers with a rich historical perspective on the roots of American journalism, the circumstances attending the rise and fall of its golden age, and the nature and consequences of its current shortcomings. The result is a powerful, eye-opening discourse on the state of political reportage -- as well as a welcome and inspiring demand for meaningful and lasting reform.
Author: Silvio Waisbord
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231506540
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
-- Scott L. Althaus, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
Author: Richard Cordray
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197503012
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Every day across America, consumers face issues with credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and student loans. When they are cheated or mistreated, all too often they hit a brick wall against the financial companies. People are fed up with being run over by big corporations, and few have the resources or expertise to fight back on their own. It is no wonder consumers feel powerless: they are outgunned every step of the way. Since 1970, the financial industry has doubled in size. It is the biggest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, spending about $1 billion annually on campaigns and another $500 million on lobbying. The four biggest banks each now has more than $1 trillion in assets. Financial products have become a mass of fine print that consumers can hardly even read, let alone understand. Growing problems in the increasingly one-sided finance markets blew up the economy in 2008. In the aftermath, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sharing the stories of individual consumers, Watchdog shows how the Bureau quickly became a powerful force for good, suing big banks for cheating or deceiving consumers, putting limits on predatory lenders, simplifying mortgage paperwork, and stepping in to help solve problems raised by individual consumers. It tells a hopeful story of how our system can be reformed by putting government back on the side of the people, to strengthen our families, safeguard the marketplace, and establish a new baseline of fairness in our democratic society.
Author: Linda L. Fowler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400866464
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
An essential responsibility of the U.S. Congress is holding the president accountable for the conduct of foreign policy. In this in-depth look at formal oversight hearings by the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Linda Fowler evaluates how the legislature's most visible and important watchdogs performed from the mid-twentieth century to the present. She finds a noticeable reduction in public and secret hearings since the mid-1990s and establishes that American foreign policy frequently violated basic conditions for democratic accountability. Committee scrutiny of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she notes, fell below levels of oversight in prior major conflicts. Fowler attributes the drop in watchdog activity to growing disinterest among senators in committee work, biases among members who join the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and motives that shield presidents, particularly Republicans, from public inquiry. Her detailed case studies of the Truman Doctrine, Vietnam War, Panama Canal Treaty, humanitarian mission in Somalia, and Iraq War illustrate the importance of oversight in generating the information citizens need to judge the president’s national security policies. She argues for a reassessment of congressional war powers and proposes reforms to encourage Senate watchdogs to improve public deliberation about decisions of war and peace. Watchdogs on the Hill investigates America’s national security oversight and its critical place in the review of congressional and presidential powers in foreign policy.
Author: Julianne Schultz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521629706
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The news media is traditionally the watchdog of democracy. Today, it is also one of the most pervasive global industries. In this lively and accessible book, Schultz systematically analyses the role of journalism in Australia and the scope of its democratic purpose. She examines key news stories, and looks at the attitudes of Australian journalists themselves. The fourth estate remains the ideal of most journalists, but the reality has been impaired by the increasing concentration of media ownership and by political, ethical and occupational interests. While Australian journalism has become bolder and more investigative, increasing commercialism and decreasing ethical standards have left the public sceptical. Schultz argues for a revival of the fourth estate based on journalistic independence and poltical autonomy, together with increased accountability and responsiveness.
Author: Arthur S. Hayes
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Robust, uninhibited, provocative, and even scurrilous criticism of corporate media by the Fifth Estate—composed of private citizens and watchdog and partisan groups of all stripes—is vital to the functioning of the American democratic process. Hayes reviews the historical development of press criticism since the 1880s in each of ten categories: muckrakers, journalism reviews, columnists and authors, television press critics, press councils, advocacy groups, scholars, ombudsmen, bloggers, and satirists. The author provides nine case studies of recent press criticism campaigns that have, though widely vilified as uncivil or marginalized as kooky, contributed significantly to checking the pretensions of corporate media to an unwholesome monopoly on journalistic truth.
Author: John Street
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137015551
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
This widely used and popular text provides a broad-ranging analysis of the relationship between the media and politics. Revised and updated throughout, this second edition includes coverage of the mediatization of politics; of E-politics and governance; of the impact of 'reality TV'; and of issues raised by the reporting of war in Iraq.
Author: Dean Starkman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231536283
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter details “how the U.S. business press could miss the most important economic implosion of the past eighty years” (Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation). In this sweeping, incisive post-mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He examines the deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—that eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006. Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite. “Can stand as a potentially enduring case study of what went wrong and why.”—Alec Klein, national bestselling author of Aftermath “With detailed statistics, Starkman provides keen analysis of how the media failed in its mission at a crucial time for the U.S. economy.”—Booklist
Author: M. A. P. Bovens
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199641250
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 737
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Book Description
Drawing on the best scholars in the field from around the world, this handbook showcases conceptual and normative as well as the empirical approaches in public accountability studies.
Author: Stephen D Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
