How six conservative media moguls hindered America and Britain from entering World War II "A damning indictment. . . . The parallels with today's right-wing media, on both sides of the Atlantic, are unavoidable."--Matthew Pressman, Washington Post "A first-rate work of history."--Ben Yagoda, Wall Street Journal As World War II approached, the six most powerful media moguls in America and Britain tried to pressure their countries to ignore the fascist threat. The media empires of Robert McCormick, Joseph and Eleanor Patterson, and William Randolph Hearst spanned the United States, reaching tens of millions of Americans in print and over the airwaves with their isolationist views. Meanwhile in England, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail extolled Hitler's leadership and Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express insisted that Britain had no interest in defending Hitler's victims on the continent. Kathryn S. Olmsted shows how these media titans worked in concert--including sharing editorial pieces and coordinating their responses to events--to influence public opinion in a right-wing populist direction, how they echoed fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and how they weakened and delayed both Britain's and America's response to Nazi aggression.

Although frequently attacked for their partisanship and undue political influence, the American media of today are objective and relatively ineffectual compared to their counterparts of two hundred years ago. From the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, newspapers were the republic's central political institutions, working components of the party system rather than commentators on it. The Tyranny of Printers narrates the rise of this newspaper-based politics, in which editors became the chief party spokesmen and newspaper offices often served as local party headquarters. Beginning when Thomas Jefferson enlisted a Philadelphia editor to carry out his battle with Alexander Hamilton for the soul of the new republic (and got caught trying to cover it up), the centrality of newspapers in political life gained momentum after Jefferson's victory in 1800, which was widely credited to a superior network of papers. Jeffrey L. Pasley tells the rich story of this political culture and its culmination in Jacksonian democracy, enlivening his narrative with accounts of the colorful but often tragic careers of individual editors.

When the ancien régime collapsed during the summer of 1789 the newspaper press was free for the first time in French history. The result was an explosion in the number of newspapers with over 2,000 titles appearing between 1789 and 1799. This study, originally published in 1988, traces the growth of the French Press during this time, showing the importance of the emergence of provincial newspapers, and examining the relationship of journalism with political power. Concluding chapters discuss the economics of newspapers during the decade, analysing the machinery of printing, distribution and sales.

Newspapers were a key source for popular opinion in the nineteenth century, and The Newspaper Indian is the first in-depth look at how newspapers and newsmaking practices shaped the representation of Native Americans, a contradictory representation that carries over into our own time. John M. Coward has examined seven decades of newspaper reporting, journalism that perpetuated the many stereotypes of the American Indian. Indians were not described on their own terms but by the norms of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant society that wrote and read about them. Beyond the examination of Native American representation (and, more often, misrepresentation) in the media, Coward shows how Americans turned native people into symbolic and ambiguous figures whose identities were used as a measure of American Progress.The Newspaper Indian is a fascinating look at a nation and the power of its press. It provides insight into how Native Americans have been woven with newsprint into the very fabric of American life.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Northern Paiute) has long been recognized as an important nineteenth-century American Indian activist and writer. Yet her acclaimed performances and speaking tours across the United States, along with the copious newspaper articles that grew out of those tours, have been largely ignored and forgotten. The Newspaper Warrior presents new material that enhances public memory as the first volume to collect hundreds of newspaper articles, letters to the editor, advertisements, book reviews, and editorial comments by and about Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. This anthology gathers together her literary production for newspapers and magazines from her 1864 performances in San Francisco to her untimely death in 1891, focusing on the years 1879 to 1887, when Winnemucca Hopkins gave hundreds of lectures in the eastern and western United States; published her book, Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883); and established a bilingual school for Native American children. Editors Cari M. Carpenter and Carolyn Sorisio masterfully assemble these exceptional and long-forgotten articles in a call for a deeper assessment and appreciation of Winnemucca Hopkins's stature as a Native American author, while also raising important questions about the nature of Native American literature and authorship.

Can a free press survive in an era of free content? An “entertaining and well-written” examination of copyright law, its history, and its purpose (New York Law Journal). You can’t copyright facts, but is news a category unto itself? Without legal protection for the “ownership” of news, what incentive does a news organization have to invest in producing quality journalism that serves the public good? Can a free press survive in the era of free content? This book explores the intertwined histories of journalism and copyright law in the United States and Great Britain, revealing how shifts in technology, government policy, and publishing strategy have shaped the media landscape. Publishers have long sought to treat news as exclusive to protect their investments against copying or “free riding.” But over the centuries, arguments about the vital role of newspapers and the need for information to circulate have made it difficult to defend property rights in news. Beginning with the earliest printed news publications and ending with the Internet, Will Slauter traces these countervailing trends, offering a fresh perspective on debates about copyright and efforts to control the flow of news. “A well-written, thoughtful book, demonstrating how copyright law has struggled to keep up with the development of news culture, setting out the historical context in great detail and supported by much research, and with interesting conclusions and predictions for the future. It is unreservedly recommended.” ––European Intellectual Property Review