American Journalism and International Relations argues that the American press' disengagement from world affairs has critical repercussions for American foreign policy. Giovanna Dell'Orto shows that discourses created, circulated and maintained through the media mold opinions about the world and shape foreign policy parameters. This book is a history of US foreign correspondence from the 1840s to the present. Americans' perceptions of other nations, combined with pervasive and enduring understandings of the United States' role in global politics, act as constraints on policies. Dell'Orto finds that reductive media discourse (as seen during the 1967 War in the Middle East or Afghanistan in the 1980s) has a negative effect on policy, whereas correspondence grounded in events (such as during the Japanese attack on Shanghai in the 1930s or the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991) fosters effective leadership and realistic assessments.
• Focuses not only on famous reporters, but also on the thousands of stories they wrote, including dispatches from The Associated Press, which are widely published but rarely studied • Shows how the journalistic narratives helped shape the image of foreign nations in ways that influenced foreign policy, thus providing a new theoretical, interdisciplinary model of the link between news media and foreign policy-making • Makes a strong call for professional journalism to continue to provide foreign correspondence in the twenty-first century
Contents
1. Introduction: the American press and international relations; 2. A new country, a new profession: America and its foreign correspondents get ready to take on the world; 3. America takes global center stage: the ascent of a political and communication power; 4. The media are American in the American century: the apex of American political and communication power; 5. A web of disentanglements: American policy and media struggle to engage the post–Cold War world; 6. The importance of being there and making people care: the troubled present and possible futures of US foreign correspondence; 7. Conclusion: reaffirming journalism's role in world affairs.
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