Killing the Messenger: 100 Years of Media Criticism / Edition 2

by Tom Goldstein

Overview

Killing the Messenger has long been a popular resource for readers eager to experience the best media criticism of the past century. Selections are chosen from magazines, journals, official reports, public speeches, and books that have been long out of print and cover a range of issues: the inadequacy of the press to police themselves, the importance of ethics and training, the problem of bias and sensationalism, and the threat of censorship.

Pieces by Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, Joseph Pulitzer, Upton Sinclair, Spiro Agnew, George Seldes, and John Hersey, among others, are now joined by A. J. Liebling's early warning of the dangers of media consolidation, Will Irwin's analysis of journalism's growing power and pervasiveness, Daniel P. Moynihan's look at the changing relationship between the press and the presidency in 1971, Robert Darnton's essay on creative license, and Leo C. Rosten's statistical survey of the sociological makeup of newspaper correspondents in 1930s Washington and the effect of a journalist's "psychology" on the character of his reporting.

Killing the Messenger serves as a valuable reminder that criticizing the press is an old and invaluable tradition in our country and that many of today's issues have their roots in these fascinating and provocative examples of early criticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231118330
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/10/2007
Edition description:	revised edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tom Goldstein has been a journalism professor for more than two decades and has served as dean of the schools of journalism at Columbia University and at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked as a reporter at several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and is the author of The News at Any Costand A Two-Faced Press.

Table of Contents

Preface
Part 1. Reporting on Public and Private Matters
The Right to Privacy, by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis
Editorials from the Emporia Gazette, 1901–1921, by William Allen White
The Press and the Individual, by George Seldes
Part 2. The Power of the Press and How to Curb It
The American Newspaper: A Study of Journalism in Relation to the Public, by Will Irwin
Selection from The Brass Check, by Upton Sinclair
Selection from the "Report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press", by Robert Maynard Hutchins
The End of Free Lunch, by A. J. Liebling
Part 3. Journalists and Their Biases—Conscious or Not?
The Man with the Muckrake, by Theodore Roosevelt
Speeches on the Media, by Spiro Agnew
The Presidency and the Press, by Daniel P. Moynihan
A Test of the News, by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz
Part 4. Telling Stories: Facts, Truth, and the News
Writing News and Telling Stories, by Robert Darnton
Newspapers and the Truth, by Frederick Lewis Allen
The Legend on the License, by John Hersey
Part 5. Making the Press Professional
Selections from the College of Journalism, by Joseph Pulitzer
The Social Composition of Washington Correspondents, by Leo C. Rosten
The Role of the Mass Media in Reporting of News about Minorities, by Commission on Civil Disorders
Index

What People are Saying About This

Theodore L. Glasser

Killing the Messenger contains some of the most important assessments of modern American journalism. The collection reminds us that many of yesterday's critiques speak to today's issues.

— Theodore L. Glasser, Stanford University

Loren Ghiglione

A must-read for media mavens, proving the most enduring (and most entertaining) criticism of the press comes from without as often as from within.

— Loren Ghiglione, Northwestern University

Editorial Reviews

An anthology of some of the most provocative writing about the press that has been done in this century. The contributors include Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Pulitzer, Upton Sinclair, Louis Brandeis, Spiro Agnew, and John Hersey. Has brief introductions and headnotes. On media ownership concentration, inadequate self-policing, sensationalizing and censoring the news, reporter training. No bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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