Who Stole the News?: Why We Can't Keep Up With What Happens in the World and What We Can Do About It - Hardcover

Rosenblum, Mort

4.14

7 ratings by Goodreads

9780471585220: Who Stole the News?: Why We Can't Keep Up With What Happens in the World and What We Can Do About It

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 047158522X ISBN 13: 9780471585220

Publisher: Wiley, 1993

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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.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Having filed dispatches from more than 150 countries in the course of a lengthy career with the AP, Rosenblum (Back Home, 1989, etc.) developed some strong opinions on the state of the news business. Here, he shares these views in a critique notable for anecdotal (often antic) asides on the occupational hazards routinely faced by foreign correspondents. Rosenblum contends that only journalists can ``provide citizens with an independent account of what might affect their good name, their treasure and, in the extreme, their sons and daughters.'' He asserts that a great deal of reportage from abroad is short-circuited by censors, spiked by editors (wrongly convinced that their audiences care mainly about local events), or aborted at the behest of budget-minded executives. If an apathetic public fails to complain about such losses, the author charges, it must share the blame. Feedback from readers or viewers is taken seriously, he insists, and can prove surprisingly effective in changing the status quo. Pointing out that significant international news sneaks out of dark alleys more often than it breaks, Rosenblum maintains that Americans have a national interest in everything that ``disturbs the planet, even if the connection is less obvious than oil fields.'' In this context, he offers perceptive commentary on the media's various branches (dailies, magazines, radio, TV, wire services, etc.) and rates their performance in covering major stories from Afghanistan to Zaire. As a print man, the Paris-based author instinctively distrusts TV's pictorial simplicities. Conceding that the fourth estate is more hound than watchdog, though, he acknowledges that, when the cameras turn away, policy professionals in Washington or other capital cities are largely free to set their own agendas. A lively, thoughtful call to bridge the information gaps that make the world a more dangerous place than it need be. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

The news hasn't really been stolen, but rather, concludes Rosenblum ( Back Home ), it has been "mugged, muffled and muzzled . . ." What Rosenblum, a foreign correspondent for 25 years, means by news is not urban and domestic violence or Amy Fisher but an election in Peru, religious changes in Algeria and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This book, not in a league with his previous works, is essentially a lament for the decline of foreign news in the American media, which he attributes to such factors as the effects of TV and new editorial perceptions of what readers want. Rosen-blum is at his most interesting when outlining how foreign news (with emphasis on the Gulf War, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia) is covered by various media in different countries and how correspondents have been sidetracked by bureaucracy and lies, or have risked their lives to get a story. Although Rosenblum exhorts editors and reporters, his call is ultimately to the readers, watchers and listeners who, if America is really to be a world leader, must look beyond their back fences.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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