Promotional Information

Killing the Messenger contains some of the most important assessments of modern American journalism. The collection reminds us that many of yesterday's critiques speak to today's issues. -- Theodore L. Glasser, Stanford University A must-read for media mavens, proving the most enduring (and most entertaining) criticism of the press comes from without as often as from within. -- Loren Ghiglione, Northwestern University

Table of Contents

Preface Part 1. Reporting on Public and Private Matters The Right to Privacy, by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis Editorials from the Emporia Gazette, 1901-1921, by William Allen White The Press and the Individual, by George Seldes Part 2. The Power of the Press and How to Curb It The American Newspaper: A Study of Journalism in Relation to the Public, by Will Irwin Selection from The Brass Check, by Upton Sinclair Selection from the "Report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press", by Robert Maynard Hutchins The End of Free Lunch, by A. J. Liebling Part 3. Journalists and Their Biases-Conscious or Not? The Man with the Muckrake, by Theodore Roosevelt Speeches on the Media, by Spiro Agnew The Presidency and the Press, by Daniel P. Moynihan A Test of the News, by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz Part 4. Telling Stories: Facts, Truth, and the News Writing News and Telling Stories, by Robert Darnton Newspapers and the Truth, by Frederick Lewis Allen The Legend on the License, by John Hersey Part 5. Making the Press Professional Selections from the College of Journalism, by Joseph Pulitzer The Social Composition of Washington Correspondents, by Leo C. Rosten The Role of the Mass Media in Reporting of News about Minorities, by Commission on Civil Disorders Index

About the Author

Tom Goldstein has been a journalism professor for more than two decades and has served as dean of the schools of journalism at Columbia University and at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked as a reporter at several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and is the author of The News at Any Costand A Two-Faced Press.

Reviews

This is a collection of 15 analyses of the mass media. The very long selections are presented with only a few sentences of explanation by the compiler, currently dean of Berkeley's journalism school and a former newspaper reporter. Included are Louis Brandeis (1890) on privacy, Theodore Roosevelt (1906) on muckraking, Upton Sinclair (1919) on the power of the press, Joseph Pulitzer (1904) on journalism training, and Frederick Lewis Allen (1922) on the search for truth. Recommended for serious media collections which desire these historic, hard-to-find documents.-- Abraham Z. Bass, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb