An eye-opening look at how the top media covers world news. Explores the pack mentality that drives reporters and how it distorts what we know about global news, economics, wars, human rights and more. Vividly illustrated with incisive anecdotes, it argues that while individual reporting is at its peak, the system is less reliable than ever. Analyzes coverage of recent hot spots such as Iran, Somalia and Eastern Europe. Features interviews with media stars.

This volume explores contemporary understandings of "news values" and the "fake news" phenomena and collects together important new theory-building research that sheds light on implications of compromised news products and the ways it shapes perceptions. News does not happen in a vacuum and journalism is a practice with a definable milieu which manufactures a product shaped by a complex and subjective collection, organization, and dissemination of information. The social import of revisiting Herbert Gans’ "what is news" ethnographic query in 1979 played out in earnest in 2020. Americans watched news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic offer politicized health information complete with conflicting reports of disagreeing experts, conspiracy theories, vaccination resistance, and racist language targeting China and people of Asian descent. This collection expands on mass communication theory frameworks built since the 1970s, to enable us to better operationalize and understand mass media’s role in defining, shaping, and amplifying news. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Mass Communication and Society.

"One of America’s most experienced and exemplary journalists has written an unsparing analysis of the dreadful consequences -- for journalism and the nation -- of ‘how the news lost a race to the bottom with itself.’” -- George F. Will In this national bestseller, Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, takes readers inside America’s broken newsrooms that have succumbed to the temptation of “rage revenue.” One of America’s sharpest political analysts, Stirewalt employs his trademark wit and insight to reveal how these media organizations slant coverage – and why that drives political division and rewards outrageous conduct. The New York Times wrote that Stirewalt’s book "is an often candid reflection on the state of political journalism and his time at Fox News, where such post-mortem assessments are not common..." Broken News is a fascinating, deeply researched, conversation-provoking study of how the news is made and how it must be repaired. Stirewalt goes deep inside the history of the industry to explain how today’s media divides America for profit. And he offers practical advice for how readers, listeners, and viewers can (and should) become better news consumers for the sake of the republic.

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint comes “a unique and engaging read about a proven habit framework [that] readers can apply to each day” (Insider, Best Books to Form New Habits). “If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why? In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about. As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles. Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction. A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.

Famous for his nearly forty years in broadcast journalism, Robert MacNeil is one of the most respected television journalists in America. Now in Breaking News, a blistering, behind-the-scenes novel about the savagely competitive world of television news, he writes about this world he knows best--a world where integrity is held hostage in the relentless pursuit of the bottom line. Anchorman Grant Munro is at what should be the pinnacle of a brilliant career. Having covered every major story from the Kennedy assassination to the Clinton sex scandals, Munro has won the admiration, respect, and trust of his viewers. About to turn sixty in an industry no longer controlled by top-notch journalists but by profit-hungry conglomerates, Munro suddenly feels his career threatened--especially when Bill Donovan, a handsome reporter with little experience but a high Q rating, vies for his anchor post. Dragged into a media circus where "soft news" and tabloid television are becoming the staples of nightly news broadcasts, Munro negotiates a minefield of scheming, greed, and betrayal to hold onto what he prizes. Acclaimed for his two previous novels, Robert MacNeil is a proven storyteller, now triumphantly on his home turf. Breaking News is not only an intimate look at a fascinating industry, but a profound study of character under pressure.

A landmark narrative history of American media that puts race at the center of the story. Here is a new, sweeping narrative history of American news media that puts race at the center of the story. From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies. The writing is fast-paced, story-driven, and replete with memorable portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, heroes and villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system—such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system, like Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a remarkable national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos ’n’ Andy off the air. Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.