In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in
foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult
type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee.
Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire
expertise that home-based reporters take for granted -- facility
with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local
cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of
the world in context for an audience with little experience and
often limited interest in foreign affairs -- a task made all the
more daunting because of the consequence to national security.
In Journalism's Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton -- a historian
and former foreign correspondent -- provides a sweeping and
definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its
inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and
technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as
well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers'
perceptions of the world across two centuries.
From the colonial era -- when newspaper printers hustled down to
wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships -- to
the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton
explores journalism's constant -- and not always successful --
efforts at "dishing the foreign news," as James Gordon Bennett put
it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the
New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the
French Revolution, the early emergence of "special correspondents"
and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact
of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War,
the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and
censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the "golden age"
of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets
for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced,
independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis'
intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular
opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam
War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to
American doorsteps.
Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of
characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of
the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news
service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of
the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871
expedition to East Africa to "find Livingstone"; and Jack Belden, a
forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat
reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents,
editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the
political leaders who made the news and the technicians who
invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to
life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for
anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign
news-gathering.
Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed
abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear
that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton
shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives
alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism's Roving Eye offers a
keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an
understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.
General
Imprint: |
Louisiana State University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
July 2011 |
First published: |
August 2011 |
Authors: |
John Maxwell Hamilton
|
Dimensions: |
254 x 175 x 32mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
680 |
Edition: |
Updated ed. |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8071-4359-9 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8071-4359-6 |
Barcode: |
9780807143599 |
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