Violent, destructive, and murderous like nothing before or since, the world wars mobilized entire societies to support the war effort. Propaganda, censorship, security demands, and military control of press credentialing pressured the media in new and novel ways. Blacks and women became war correspondents in numbers for the first time, while live radio broadcasts and combat film and photography enabled newsmen to report the heroism, tragedy and violence of war in new, more visceral, ways.
Beginning with a day that would live in infamy and ending with a war-weary sigh, reporters covering war-ravaged Asia during World War II and the Korean War had to contend with a reading public unfamiliar with the region's politics and geography, and who were more interested in European events. Some of the most storied and savage fighting of the twentieth century occurred during these two conflicts, and reporters found themselves caught between the demands of truthful reporting and the need to sustain public support for the war.
The French and Indian War strengthened the bonds of the British colonists settled on the eastern shores as they eagerly sought news about the outcomes of the battles at Ticonderoga, Niagara, Duquesne, and Quebec, battles that would determine if America would be a French or a British colony. During the War of Independence newspapers would once again serve as a national clearing-house for reports of the first stirrings of the revolutionary movement, the gloomy first years of defeat and retreat, and finally of resurgence, triumph, and sovereignty.
Called the first modern war and our greatest national calamity, the nation's press conveyed news of the Civil War to the citizens North and South who looked to newspapers as their primary source of information. Circulation pressures, political partisanship, scarce materials, and the unyielding public appetite for the latest news all contributed to how the growing numbers of professional journalists covered the pressing political and military events during those crucial years.
Democracies cannot sustain unpopular wars. Vietnam was the most divisive for war for the American people. The enemy's tenacity was not accounted for in U.S. war plans until there was frustration in the field, skepticism in the press, and splintered support at home. After the Vietnam debacle the press's latitude to cover military action was increasingly curtailed by the military and the government, which sought to control the flow and content of the news better than they had in Vietnam by forcing reporters into supervised media pools.
Young America's next encounter with Britain came during the War of 1812, when the nation's press called for all Americans to defend their recently won independence and protect their territorial integrity and national rights. The Mexican-American War was the nation's first war of westward expansion, the reporting of which was greatly affected by the emergence of the telegraph and military censorship of news from the war zone.
World War I, Mass Death, and the Birth of the Modern US Soldier: A Rhetorical History examines the United States government’s postwar ideological and rhetorical project in establishing permanent national military cemeteries abroad. Constructed throughout Europe where citizen-soldiers had fought and perished, and sacralized as American sites, these burial grounds simultaneously linked the nation’s war dead back to American soil and the national purpose rooted there, expressed the nation’s emerging prominent role on the world’s stage, and advanced the burgeoning icon of the “sacrificial, universal” US soldier. It draws upon untapped archival and historical materials from the WWI and interwar periods, as well as original on-site research, to show how the cemeteries came to display and advance the vision of the modern US soldier as “a global force for good.” Ultimately, within the visual display of overseas cemeteries we can detect the birth of “the modern US soldier”—a potent icon in which divergent emotions, memories, beliefs, and arguments of Americans and non-Americans have been expressed for a century.
"Written in a clear and accessible style that would suit the needs of journalists and scholars alike, this encyclopedia is highly recommended for large news organizations and all schools of journalism." —Starred Review, Library Journal Journalism permeates our lives and shapes our thoughts in ways we′ve long taken for granted. Whether we listen to National Public Radio in the morning, view the lead story on the Today show, read the morning newspaper headlines, stay up-to-the-minute with Internet news, browse grocery store tabloids, receive Time magazine in our mailbox, or watch the nightly news on television, journalism pervades our daily activities. The six-volume Encyclopedia of Journalism covers all significant dimensions of journalism, including print, broadcast, and Internet journalism; U.S. and international perspectives; history; technology; legal issues and court cases; ownership; and economics. The set contains more than 350 signed entries under the direction of leading journalism scholar Christopher H. Sterling of The George Washington University. In the A-to-Z volumes 1 through 4, both scholars and journalists contribute articles that span the field′s wide spectrum of topics, from design, editing, advertising, and marketing to libel, censorship, First Amendment rights, and bias to digital manipulation, media hoaxes, political cartoonists, and secrecy and leaks. Also covered are recently emerging media such as podcasting, blogs, and chat rooms. The last two volumes contain a thorough listing of journalism awards and prizes, a lengthy section on journalism freedom around the world, an annotated bibliography, and key documents. The latter, edited by Glenn Lewis of CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and York College/CUNY, comprises dozens of primary documents involving codes of ethics, media and the law, and future changes in store for journalism education. Key Themes Consumers and Audiences Criticism and Education Economics Ethnic and Minority Journalism Issues and Controversies Journalist Organizations Journalists Law and Policy Magazine Types Motion Pictures Networks News Agencies and Services News Categories News Media: U.S. News Media: World Newspaper Types News Program Types Online Journalism Political Communications Processes and Routines of Journalism Radio and Television Technology
In post-Civil War America, civilians were ordinarily far-removed from the actual fighting. War brought about tremendous and far-reaching changes to America's society, politics, and economy nonetheless. Readers are offered detailed glimpses into the lives of ordinary folk struggling with the privations, shortages, and anxieties brought on by U.S. entry into war. They are also shown how they strove to turn changing times to their advantage, especially civically and economically, as minorities pressed for political inclusion and traders profited from government contracts and women took on well-paying skilled jobs in large numbers for the first time. Susan Badger Doyle's chapter on the Indian Wars in the American West shows how for whites the migration westward was the path to a land of opportunity, for Native Americans migration it was a disastrous epoch that led to their near-extermination. Michael Neiberg's piece on World War I highlights how America's entry into the war on the Allied side was far from universally popular or supported because of large German and Irish immigrant communities, and how this tepid support led to the creation of some of the harshest censorship and curtailment of civil rights in U.S. history. Judy Litoff's chapter on the home front during World War II focuses on the exceptional changes brought on by total mobilization for the war effort, African-Americans' push for expanded civil rights, to women entering the workforce in large numbers, to the public's acceptance, even expectation, of centralized planning and government intervention in economic and social matters. Jon Timothy Kelly's essay on the Cold War provides a look at how the country quickly returned to a state of readiness when the end of World War II ushered in the Cold War and the immanent threat of nuclear annihilation, even as a booming economy brought undreamt of material prosperity to huge numbers of Americans. Finally, James Landers describes how American involvement in Vietnam, the first televised war, profoundly changed American attitudes about war even as this particular conflict touched few Americans, but divided them like few previous events have.
