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Notice to authors: Please ask your publishers to send review copies of your books to Professor Shelton Gunaratne , JIC review editor, Mass Communications Department, Minnesota State University Moorhead, MN 56563, U.S.A.

The Journal of International Communication

Book Reviews in Vol. 6 No. 2  (1999)

Review essay 1 by K. Starck

Breen, ed. Journalism: Theory and Practice
            Bovée  Discovering Journalism
            Huntzicker The Popular Press, 1833-1865
            Riley  The American Newspaper Columnist

Review essay 2 by P. Bell

            Breen, ed. Journalism: Theory and Practice

Yearbook review by S. Gunaratne

Book reviews

Albarran & Chan-Olmsted  Global Media Economics (reviewed by Y. Pasadeos)
Cantor 'Mommy, I’m scared’ (reviewed by P. Vorderer & S. Zapfe)
Ferguson & Golding, eds. Cultural Studies in Question (reviewed by G. Griffin)
Melkote, Shields & Agrawal, eds. International Satellite Broadcasting in Asia (reviewed by M. Butcher)
Sussman & Lent, eds. Global Productions (reviewed by P. Waterman)
Venturelli  Liberalizing the European Media (reviewed by D.R. Browne)  
Von Frelitzen & Carlsson, eds.  Children and Media (reviewed by A. B. Jordan)

Review essays

JOURNALISM:  HELPING ESTABLISH JOURNALISM AS A DISCIPLINE

       Breen, Myles, ed.
        Journalism: Theory and Practice. Paddington, NSW, Australia: Macleay Press, 1998. 374 pp.

        Bovée, Warren G. 
        Discovering Journalism. Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1999. 223 pp.

       Huntzicker, William E. 
       The Popular Press, 1833-1865. Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1999. xii+210 pp.

        Riley, Sam G.
        The American Newspaper Columnist. Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1998. xvii+251 pp.

Herewith a few questions guaranteed to stir debate: Is journalism an academic discipline?  Or is it just one of the branches of what is the real discipline, namely, communication?  If so, is journalism then merely an offshoot of mass communication?  If so, doesn’t that push journalism pretty far down the academic pecking order?

At different times in my professional and academic career I’ve grappled with all those questions.  At various times I’ve answered all of them yes and no, though, thank goodness, never at the same time.  Perspectives have a way of changing with a person’s particular circumstance, say, as a junior professor or a professional practitioner or as an administrator and, especially, with the location of journalism instruction in the university’s sometimes dizzy ordering of academic units.

Such are some of the thoughts that arose from a summer of reading four books dealing with journalism.  At the outset, I want to say that I heartily recommend all of these books but not necessarily for beach companionship.

These   These four volumes differ a great deal in their intent.

One (Journalism: Theory and Practice) brings together many if not most of the contemporary journalism issues in Australia, with equal servings of theory and practice.  Another (Discovering Journalism) presents a conceptual framework for journalism as it has evolved in the United States.  The other two (The Popular Press, 1833-1865 and  The American Newspaper Columnist) are primarily historical works that shed light on some of the lesser considered crevices in the history of the U.S. press. For me, Journalism: Theory and Practice was the most interesting of the four books. Myles Breen, professor of communication at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales, has done a masterful job of editing this book, as well as contributing two of its 18 chapters.  His introduction sets the stage nicely for the five organizing subthemes of the book: The Place of Theory, Theories of News, The Application of Theory to Journalistic Situations, Theory and Technology and Formation of Journalists: Theory and Practice.

At the conclusion of his introduction, Breen writes that the “book is designed to make a contribution to the assembly of the ‘body of theory’ for the discipline of journalism” (p. 14).  That was a modest goal.  The book does much more than that.  It could well serve as a textbook.  With its critical insights and literature reviews on areas such as ethnicity, ethics and photojournalism, it could be a valuable reference work for both teaching journalism and conducting scholarly research.  Finally, it is simply an excellent introduction to journalism instruction and scholarship in this region of the world.  Relevant topics include cultural studies, objectivity, ethics, social responsibility, communication models, international news, drama in storytelling, ethnicity, Internet, broadcast, photojournalism, journalism education and more.  Not much is overlooked.  One exception: gender issues.

All of the contributors to the book are journalism teachers in Australian or New Zealand universities and have worked professionally.  Their backgrounds validate what they have to say.  The anthology itself has been inspired by the loss of an esteemed colleague, Charles Stuart, who began the book project.  His untimely death in 1998 put the project on hold.  Breen, happily, stepped forward.  The book is dedicated to Stuart.

Singling out outstanding articles in this collection is challenging because so many are well done.  Keith Windschuttle gets things off to a rollicking start with a full-bore attack on cultural studies (“Cultural Studies versus Journalism”).  His thesis is that cultural studies undermines journalism.  Journalism, he argues, is committed to reporting the truth, is obligated primarily to its audience and is committed to good writing.  Media theory as infused by cultural studies upholds none of these principles which, in fact, “are specifically denied, either by argument or by example, by the dominant intellectual field that has reigned in media theory for the last 15 years” (p. 18).

Ian Richards provides a far-ranging and critical assessment of journalism responsibility (“Ethics: Journalists and Victims”).  His discussion has both practical applications, such as decisions about identifying victims, and theoretical implications.  He argues effectively that in light of the increasing corporatization of media “far more attention needs to be given to the notion of the institution as moral agent” (p. 157).  Journalists as individuals also must adhere to ethical principles; but, as Richards points out so well, their success usually depends on their loyalty to the organization. 

And who sez scholarly palaver can’t be fun-at least, if yer writin’ about new journalism?  “From Gonzo to PoMo: Hunting New Journalism” is the title of Martin Hirst’s delightful parody.  Gonzo journalism, he says, merely showed that objectivity sucks, but PoMo (postmodernism for us “unadulterates”) journalism is just plain “bullshit” (p. 198).

That gives you only a hint of this marvelous collection.  I should also mention Breen’s own chapter that deals exhaustively with “The Dramatic Imperative in Journalism”; Grahame Griffin’s “Theorising Photojournalism,” which tackles ethical issues raised by the paparazzi in the death of Princess Di, as well as implications of digitalization; and  the final two chapters-John Henningham on characteristics of Australian journalists and Roger Patching on the best kind of education (it’s liberal arts) for journalists.

Many of the themes in  Journalism: Theory and Practice also appear in Discovering Journalism.  These include objectivity, the definition of news, new journalism, professionalism and journalism education.  The obvious difference is that they deal with journalism in different press systems.  But there is another important difference.  One is the work of some 20 scholars, while the other springs from the effort of an individual scholar.  The main benefit of anthologies derives from varied expertise and perspectives.  The value of individual scholarship comes from unity and coherence and, in the case of  Discovering Journalism, a wisdom reflected in the considerable academic and professional experience of author Warren Bovée, professor emeritus of Marquette University.

Bovée states that his overall objective in  Discovering Journalism is “to explicate a general theory of journalism” (p. 3).  This was an ambitious goal and, unfortunately, falls a bit short of the mark. The title is apt.  It suggests the journey taken by the author.  But it also points toward an axiom of education itself, namely, that each generation-indeed, each individual-must undergo the experience of “discovering” the meaning of journalism and, well, for that matter, life.  It’s the nature of the educational process. 

Bovée weaves a thoughtful narrative by presenting a series of essays on journalism and journalistic issues.  Generous infusions of history provide context and perspective to his discussion of such topics as the meanings of news, journalism and democracy, objectivity, editorials, public opinion and journalism education.  He offers thoughtful reflections on fundamental issues, focusing often on definitions of key concepts.  He reminds us that too often we take for granted that everyone knows what we mean when we speak of “public opinion” or “mass communication” or even “journalism.” Too many scholars presume others know exactly what they mean when they use such terms common to the field.

Thus, Bovée lays out his game plan:  “We will begin, progress, and organize our expedition with the consideration of words and their meanings.  If we have disagreements-and we may have many-they will probably focus on the meanings of words” (p. 2).  His justification?  “Understanding will not always lead to agreement, but without understanding, agreement is only accidentally possible and thus almost never successful” (p. 3).  At times, in fact, the reader may grow weary of the author’s semantic fine tuning, but inevitably, like foul-tasting medicine that’s good for you, the exercise elevates the discussion to higher levels.

This highly readable book has other excellent ideas.  For example, Bovée draws distinctions between different kinds of journalism: amateur, personal/private and public affairs. The amateur approach asserts “everyone’s a journalist.” Personal or private journalism includes advertising and public relations, as well as “soft” journalism, that aim to persuade, entertain and provide basic information for informed personal decision-making (finance, health, home improvements, etc.). Public affairs journalism calls for the professional journalist because nothing is more important than the “beat” involving news dealing with self-governance.  The distinctions, though not always clear-cut, are important as journalism educators devise a curriculum for the future. 

This is a book hard to classify.  It is not a text but would be useful to the beginning journalism student or a lay person simply interested in “discovering” journalism.  It is historical.  It examines a number of contemporary journalism problems though it does not offer many suggestions for resolutions. Bovée suggests that the public school system should give more attention to journalism and proposes a Ph.D. in journalism with an emphasis on professionalism rather than scholarly research.

Bovée does not take much of a critical stance toward the media.  His inherent assumption is that journalists will behave responsibly on the basis of “their goodwill and on their understanding of what journalism is and what is required to practice it well” (p. 149). The book fails to achieve the goal of explicating “a general theory of journalism,” though it has the ingredients for theory in the discussion of private versus public journalism.  Curiously, the discussion on “public” journalism has no reference to the recent “civic/public” journalism movement so vigorously promulgated by the Pew Foundation.

William Huntzicker’s  The Popular Press, 1833-1865 is the third in an ambitious series of seven volumes that ultimately will encompass the complete history of journalism in the United States.  (The first was The Early American Press, 1690-1783 [1994] by Wm. David Sloan, one of the series’ editors, and Julie Hedgepeth Williams, followed by  The Press of the Young Republic, 1783-1833  [1996] by Carol Sue Humphrey.)  As with the previous works, this volume concentrates on the nature of the journalism practiced during the period under study, discusses prominent journalistic figures of the time, looks at journalism’s relationship to society and, finally, seeks to shed some light on the directions journalism was taking.

By any accounting, 1833 was a watershed year for journalism in the United States.  As the first sentence of the book asserts, “When the New York Sun appeared on the streets on September 13, 1833, it did not look like a newspaper” (p. 1).  It was much smaller (11 inches, or 28.5 cm by 8 5/8 inches, or 22 cm) and sold for a penny.  Its content appealed to ordinary people.  Other newspapers of the time sold for 6 cents, appealed to such elite groups as politicians and financiers and were known as “blanket sheets” because they were large enough to cover a man sleeping on a park bench.

The Sun, founded by Benjamin Henry Day, who was 22 at the time, was not the nation’s first penny paper.  But the Sun and James Gordon Bennett’s more successful New York Herald, founded in 1835, were the only two among 35 penny papers started in New York in the 1830s to survive the decade.

Huntzicker, a former reporter who teaches at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, has produced a finely honed scholarly work.  His writing is crisp.  His research is thorough, drawing routinely on primary materials.  His interpretations are prudent, studied and nuanced.  The examples and colorful quotes he weaves into the narrative add to the readability. These include the quote from Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman who, upon learning that three newspaper reporters were missing after the Confederates sank a Union ship, exclaimed, “Good!  Now we can have news from hell before breakfast” (p. 146); and editor/poet Walt Whitman’s description of James Gordon Bennett as “a reptile marking his path with slime wherever he goes, and breathing mildew at everything fresh and fragrant; a mighty ghoul, preying on rottenness and repulsive filth” (p. 31).

Following a generally chronological narrative, Huntzicker adopts a thematic organization.  His chapter headings detail his approach:  “News Hits the Streets,” “New York Newspaper Wars,” “The Persistence of Partisan Journalism,” “Specialized Publications,” “Diverse Voices, Alternative Newspapers,” “Western Newspaper Wars,” “The Editors’ Civil War” and “Reporters, Officers, and Soldiers.”  In the ninth and final chapter, Huntzicker offers reflections on the three-plus decades under study.  These range from implications of innovations in the printing process (the perfected Linotype machine was still to come) to labor specialization, from the development of the inverted pyramid style of reporting to the trend of journalism toward a capital-intensive business, from dealing with minority and ethnic newspapers to the dramatic impact of the telegraph.

This book will be a useful reference for a long time.  Especially helpful for other scholars will be the author’s detailed documentation and thoughtful bibliographical essay.  A minor criticism: Too bad the publishers did not include a few photographs or illustrations of some of the publications and the prominent journalists.

Sam G. Riley’s The American Newspaper Columnist brings to this generally neglected topic an affection that perhaps only a former columnist could have.  He has written two previous books about column writing, The Best of the Rest: Non-Syndicated Newspaper Columnists Select Their Best Work (1993) and Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists (1995).  He teaches at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg.

Critical to Riley’s work is his definition of the topic area. Not every reader or, especially, scholar, will be satisfied.  This book is about columnists.  So how do you define a column?  Columns have two characteristics, says Riley, who confesses that answering that question is “rather like trying to grab a piece of Jell-O” (p. xii).  First, a column has to appear regularly.  Second, it’s got to be interesting.  Also columnists get to write any way they want (feature, literary, etc.), and their work is personal (forget objectivity). OK, so what about critics and reviewers; or specialists in gossip, advice and sports?  Sorry, Ann Landers and Red Smith, the line had to be drawn somewhere. 

Riley’s states the purpose of the book is “to describe the origins, development, and present condition of this particular corner of newspaper journalism” (p. xi).  He arranges his material mostly chronologically and within categories that comprise his chapter headings.  Thus, he deals with columnists identified as early (in the 1800s), humor, poets, syndicated political, other syndicated, local and minority.

How Riley selected columnists is not always clear.  For example, he identifies 12 “new humor columnists” in the second half of the 1980s though why he selected them is not clear. Some were local, some were syndicated “or otherwise nationally distributed,” and four were “self-syndicated.” Selections seem fairly judgmental, which is less a criticism and more of an acknowledgment of the difficulty of the task. Riley often offers a laundry list of names with sparse information.  Yet that too is not meant as harsh criticism because of the groundbreaking nature of the enterprise.  About the time the text induces drowsiness, Riley throws in a nugget that reclaims reader attention.  A few examples:

From early humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw (a.k.a. Josh Billings): “It ain’t so much ignorance that ails mankind as it is knowing so much that ain’t so” (p. 14).

Walter Lippmann was not the first political columnist, but he probably was the most political and “the ultimate pundit” (p. 83).

Eugene Field (author of children’s classics “Little Boy Blue” and “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod”) in his Chicago newspapering days wrote six columns a week, each running about 2,000 words.

Will Rogers: “I love a dog.  He does nothing for political reasons” (p. 24).

Riley’s work provides numerous leads for follow-up research.  For example: Why does it appear easier for African-American conservative columnists to become syndicated than for African-American liberals?  To what extent and with what impact have newspapers begun to rely on usually ideologically driven free columns from “think tank” writers?  With the growing use of Internet, what will be the impact on column writing.   For example, with video will columnists be expected to act as well as write?

Finally, what do these works tell us about the journalism of Australia and the United States?  Sharp distinctions are elusive because the intent, content and method of these works is so dissimilar.  But, as noted earlier, the Breen and Bovée books explore some of the same issues occupying journalists and journalism educators.  Mounting concern over ethics and responsibility is one example.  Objectivity and the definition of news are others.  But a difference does emerge.  It centers on the appropriate education of future journalists, or, to be more specific, the philosophy underlying journalism education.  The Breen book arrays the divergence of thinking about journalism education in Australia.  It attempts to sort out core journalistic issues against the backdrop of broader communication-related issues such as postmodernism and cultural studies.  Although there’s the risk that journalism might get lost in the process, journalism stands to be enriched from such interdisciplinary discourse.

Bovée’s work, meanwhile, accentuates the fact that discussions involving the philosophy of journalism education in the United States seldom take place, except perhaps in doctoral studies, though Bovée argues for a professional focus here too.  At the undergraduate level, the focus is on equipping students with the tools to fit into the job market.  Accreditation in the United States (by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications), while standardizing the educational process, also has repressed the spirit of innovative thinking about journalism education.

Taken together, the four volumes examined in this essay do have something else in common: An affirmation that journalism, at least from the national perspectives represented, is alive with intellectual ferment.  That bodes well for those who want to carry the cudgel on behalf of journalism as a discipline.

Kenneth Starck, professor
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
The University of Iowa

A response

    Breen, Myles, ed.
    Journalism: Theory and Practice. Paddington, NSW: Macleay Press, 1998. 374pp.

The dearth of useful Australian books on theoretical and practical aspects of journalism as a profession and as cultural practice means that the publication of Breen’s collection has been eagerly awaited. The editor himself certainly had high hopes for his collection which, he claims, “follows the tradition set by the granddaddy of all communication texts, Wilbur Schramm’s Mass Communications” (1960, p. 10).

  This comparison highlights more than Breen’s naiveté about the Australian tertiary education context in which the book will need to find its readership.  It also endorses American empirical communications studies approaches that seem to persist in Australia despite their a-theoretical, even anti-theoretical assumptions. Consequently the collection is founded on an uneasy, slightly embarrassed attitude to “theory” which, I will argue, undermines the book’s coherence.  Worse, many of the contributors are clearly uneasy when writing analytically about the social or cultural contexts and significance of journalism. As a result, some simply forego any attempt at conceptual subtlety and revert to commonsensical description thereby vitiating the laudable purpose proclaimed for the book which is  “…designed to make a contribution to the assembly of the ‘body of theory’ for the discipline of journalism” (p 14).

  The precise educational purpose of the book is unclear.  The editor’s introduction in fact, is likely to embarrass all the contributors because it  fails to suggest any coherent academic reason for the selection of papers.  To add insult to injury, the editor’s introduction implies that the book arises principally from an ulterior, cynically opportunistic motive.  Let me discuss the  introduction further to illustrate why I feel justified in making this criticism.

The banality of the introductory essay devalues the whole collection: for example, the reader of Journalism: Theory and Practice may not be as delighted as Breen to know that the particular contributor “…currently resid(ing) at the salubrious Gold Coast campus of Griffith University, surely the most sought-after position in the world of academic journalism” is included in the anthology because he “is also intensely interested in both practical and scholarly worlds” (sic, p 11).  Editor, edit thyself!  Especially as he also compares his collection of papers with Schramm’s (1960) Mass Communications,  which we are told became so valuable that “used copies were being sold at three times the price of the original” (p 10-11), leading the envious editor to exclaim that he “would like that kind of reception for [his] text!”

  Breen’s lengthy introductory essay is curiously vague about just what “theory” might do for the “discipline” of journalism studies and apologises for the use of the theory word itself.  He  seems to be trying to protect readers (“most journalists”, “students”) from eye-glazing (his term) theory by simultaneously trivialising theoretical issues and encouraging only superficial engagement with them:

  “If the eyes of practising professionals should wander over these pages, then that is an added benefit” to the compilation of “useful theories of journalism … applied … to concrete contemporary examples for the benefit of our students” (sic).  But to be “useful” or “of benefit”, each paper needs to address, at least implicitly, questions such as: within what precise pedagogical contexts could its concepts be of value, and how?  The same questions should have been addressed by the editor.  Sadly, they have not, and only a few of the contributors seem to be trying to explicate theoretically subtle insights into well-defined issues concerning The Place of Theory; The Application (sic) of Theory….; Theory and Technology,  or The Formation of Journalists”, the section headings around which the collection is organised.

  Perhaps these peculiar attempts at humour reveal the commercial purpose of the book in the same breath as exposing its naivety.  For these comments come from the plodding introductory essay which both apologises for the “theoretical” content of some of the papers that follow and simultaneously approves of their scholarly, even philosophical concerns.  The reader being condescended to here is clearly the generic journalism student who has to be reassured that the “theorists” cited are “useful”, “practical”, have their feet in the “real world” and can be “applied” because they are not really too academic.  Yet , theory is necessary, because “…the reality of the academy is that ‘theory’ is a saleable commodity when monetary grants are distributed by the administration” (p 3).

  So, there you have it students (a.k.a. potential market): the book has had to refer to Aristotle and Euclid, Rorty and Baudrillard despite its more practical interests, because “A discipline without a written body of theory (literally, a ‘literature’) is unthinkable in a university culture” (p 3).  (I assume that even a salubrious Gold Coast university has enough of this kind of culture to need to include some theory-sellers within its faculties).

  The self-proclaimed “scholarship” of the collection only alerts the reader to the anti-intellectualism  and personalised arguments of some of the papers. It seems that the division between Australian academics who have also worked as journalists and those who have not still matters, to some of the former at least. But this is no excuse for the gratuitous insults that pass for argument in some papers. (Indeed, the book has occasioned considerable discussion for just this reason. I will not discuss the book’s obsession with Australian Cultural Studies academic John Hartley shown by Breen, Windschuttle, Roger Patching and by “Gonzo” Hirst. Hartley (1999) has published a critique of the book as a response to its hyperbolic and aggressive atacks on himself.)

  It is hard not to feel insulted by this condescending introduction.  Not only is it naïve, it is frequently wanders aimlessly, offers cute “jokes” and a litany of cliches (journalese, indeed).  Not an auspicious way to encourage students to begin to think theoretically.  Worse, Breen over-simplifies as he summarises the papers he has collected, which reduces the value of contributors’ work.  But without visiting the sins of the editor on these authors, let me try to convey the degree to which some, at least, contribute “to the assembly of the ‘body of theory’ for the discipline of journalism” (p 14).

  Unfortunately, Keith Windschuttle’s gratuitous attack on Cultural Studies which immediately follows the introduction, offers mere shadow-boxing with an assumed enemy that few journalism students will recognise.  Moving clumsily from “media theory” to “cultural studies”, to “postmodernism” (and “poststructuralism”), Windschuttle attacks the lack of epistemological realism (perhaps a more accurate term would be “naïve realism”) in these various and quite distinct theoretical fields.  He sets up easily refuted versions  of conventionalism and textualism to assert the simple, contrasting  virtues of “a realist view of the world, an ethical regard for audiences, and a commitment to good writing” (p31).  Windschuttle argues ad hominem (which is hardly ethical), trades in caricature, and is rather disingenuous in his literal (mis)reading of authors like Baudrillard.  (But, at least the writing is clear.)  For this reader at least, the inclusion of such an outdated, polemical paper raises the questions: why begin a book on theory and practice with a travesty of theoretical analysis?  Why give publicity to this attack on ideas that are not central to journalism education in Australia, and have never been?  Why show potential journalists that it is academically (or even journalistically) acceptable to lump together distinct intellectual positions solely for the purposes of re-asserting the virtue of your own position?

  Ideally, the papers in such a collection should exemplify insightful theoretical analysis.  Few do, even those which seek to deal with Theory (in general, ‘with a capital T’) as Windschuttle’s piece does. Instead of assisting the reader to find her way across the field, it settles for crass caricatures of old perspectives, and even attacks a book published in 1983 by an author long dead. The issues Windschuttle addresses are largely irrelevant to the purposes of journalism education, and allowing him to settle some rhetorical scores with antagonists from the 70s and 80s suggests that the editor himself is unclear just what is currently at stake in “theory”.  For example, Windschuttle lampoons Stuart Hall’s argument for an encoding-decoding model of communication.  He (Windschuttle) seems miffed that such “verbiage” has been “successful”.  Yet he is ignorant of recent empirical work which depends on Hall’s’ approach such as Darnell Hunt’s (1997) elegantly insightful study of Black audiences’ various decodings of television coverage of the “LA race riots”. Hunt shows how theories of hegemony and of “negotiated” readings of journalistic “texts” can be articulated to produce subtle knowledge of media “effects”: Theory as practice; theory of practice.

  A second example: Windschuttle either misunderstands or willfully misreads Baudrillard’s “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”.  He seems to have read only the title and taken it literally.  He then attacks Baudrillard for claiming the “non-reality of the war” (p 26).  Yet the English language editor of Baudrillard’s text even includes some suggestions as to how Windschuttle and others might have “read” the French  essay. Paul Patton points out that Baudrillard’s essay is a “sardonic challenge to the media hype surrounding the Gulf crisis. It is not irony so much as a kind of black humour which seeks to subvert what is being said by pursuing its implicit logic to extremes” (1995, p.7). Such is his antagonism to all things “theoretical” that Windschuttle perversely ignores such subtleties.

  Other papers also seem ill at ease with conceptual and analytical argument.  Still, some are closely focussed on models of communication or on re-interpreting the literature on “news values” and this allows a precise and potentially useful discussion of this long-standing issue in journalism research. Griffin presents a  precise and subtle discussion of documentary contexts for photographs as a way of theoretically examining the news photo. He maintains a balance between example and analysis to illuminate how “The press photograph is a carrier of cultural meanings and values that interacts with its viewers to construct an image of…Australia as a nation” (p. 319). This is the kind of expository writing which opens up theoretical questions to students without obfuscation or over-simplification. 

  The professionalism of journalism (or its status as a “profession”) is considered in contradictory ways, by Meadows and Henningham.  The former links the profession to models of hegemony and urges that journalist see themselves “as influential intellectuals who are in a position to exert moral and cultural leadership” (p 79), although this sits a little uneasily beside the Gramscian analysis Meadows provides.  Henningham summarises his statistical surveys of journalists’ occupational and educational status.  He presents a curiously decontextualised list of facts, like “67% of journalists are employed by urban-based newspapers” (p335).  He refers to people “who ended up as journalists” (ibid) which suggests that (a) many people educated as journalists “end up” otherwise employed, and (b) journalism may be neither a vocation nor a profession for many of its practitioners.  Curiously he discusses none of the implications of his data in terms which address the other papers in the book.  He is not alone in this.  The most glaring (literally) instance of a paper which seems to have strayed in from another conceptual world is Martin Hirst’s parody of Gonzo journalism.  This great fun for the initiated , but again, it is likely to be lost on journalism students unless given some historical or theoretical contextualisation. 

  The failure to provide conceptual tools for students (and hence to allow them to theoreorise their practice) is the most obvious shortcoming of most of the papers.  So what could have been an invitation to think theoretically all too often becomes an apologetic or defensive avoidance of theory.  Only Griffin, Meadows, Hirst and Sedorkin and Shirato seem comfortable with “theory”, although the last, Bourdieu-based piece offers a rather perfunctory analysis of Frontline.

  Perhaps the fundamental misconception of this book is that “theory” is a distinct pre-existing set of discourses waiting to be applied to some set of practices called “journalism”. This view of Theory , ironically,  is shared by some of the Cultural Studies writers who are cited in the book. But theories are plural, contingent, specific , and form the terms within which conversations about , and criticisms of, particular practices are conducted. The way to teach students “theory and practice” may be to teach practical journalism theoretically. So books like The Language of the News Media (Alan Bell, 1991) and Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader (Berkowitz, 1997) would be better places for journalism educators to enter the theoretical conversations than is the  book under review.

  Despite its title, Journalism: Theory and Practice accelerates the retreat by journalism education from intellectual engagement with cognate disciplines when it could have faced up to the challenge of thinking analytically, precisely and creatively about practice and about the changing professional contexts of journalism in Australia. An opportunity lost.

  Reference

  Hartley, J., 1999, Why is it scholarship when someone wants to kill you? Truth as violence. Continuum, 13 (2) 227-235.

Philip Bell, professor
The University of New South Wales
Sydney

 
Yearbook Review

• 1999 APT Yearbook. Bangkok: Asia-Pacific Telecommunity; and Sutton: ICOM Publications.

• 1999 Editor & Publisher International Year Book (79^th ed.). New York: The Editor & Publisher Co.

• 1999 Statistical Yearbook. Paris: UNESCO Institute of Statistics; and Lanham, MD: Bernan Press.

• World Press Trends 1999 (10^th ed.). Paris: World Association of Newspapers; and London: Zenith  Media.

• World Telecommunication Development Report 1999. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.   

Researchers depend on these yearbooks for much of the data on mass media and telecommunications worldwide. Such data are indispensable for analysis of international communication phenomena. Therefore, the reliability and validity of the data these yearbooks produce need closer examination.

Both UNESCO and ITU collect data on television. Ideally, the data from these two sources should not show wide divergences if they represent the actuality in a given country.  A comparison of their data, however, shows wide differences (Table 1). The data on the number and density of TV receivers in several countries in Asia alone—Pakistan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia,
Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau—are so markedly different that the two agencies owe an explanation that goes beyond the generalities of data collection.

UNESCO says that the data “relate to all types of receivers …, including those connected to a cable distribution system” It further clarifies that it gathers the data “from official replies to UNESCO questionnaires and special surveys” and “from official reports and publications.” ITU collects its data on TV sets through annual questionnaires sent to national broadcasting authorities and industry associations. ITU explains that in a country with a licensing system, the number of licenses may understate the true number of receivers if there is widespread avoidance of licensing. But neither UNESCO nor ITU gives a clear explanation on the exact method it uses to derive the data on TV receivers. 

Discrepancies exist between UNESCO data on daily newspapers and the World Press Trends data of the World Association of Newspapers (Table 2).  The 1999 UNESCO Statistical Yearbook merely repeats the 1996 newspaper data already published in the 1998 yearbook. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics, created on July 1, 1999, has apparently given low priority to updating newspaper data. The UNESCO Web site is well behind the UNESCO yearbook. The data site displays a few outdated indicators of dubious value.  Comparisons of newspaper data for Asian countries clearly show discrepancies in the number of titles. UNESCO data for China claimed 70 titles in 1985 and 44 in 1990; and its data for India claimed 1,802 titles in 1985. Since then, UNESCO has given up listing the number of dailies in China and India. One would imagine that counting the number of dailies in a country is a relatively simple task compared to estimating their total circulation. Surely, it should be possible for specialized agencies and associations to consult each other to determine more reliable data on mass media worldwide.

Another publication researchers use to gather newspaper data worldwide is the Editor and Publisher International Year Book. If the 1999 edition of this publication is a typical example of its previous editions, it’s time to demand greater accuracy from those who publish it. The data on newspapers in Asia are highly dubious with the identical circulation figures appearing year after year for some dailies. It continues to list newspapers that died many years ago with names of editors and publishers who no longer hold those positions. For example, it lists Indonesia’s Sinar Harapan as having a circulation of 285,000 and names Setiadi Tryman as its editor. This newspaper has not appeared since 1986 when the Suharto regime banned it. It also lists two Sri Lanka dailies—Dawasa and Sun—which folded in 1990 with the demise of the Independent Newspapers Ltd. Furthermore, E & P lists another daily titled Dinakara, which is no more than a figment of its imagination. Obviously, E & P needs more competent researchers to clean up the multitude of inaccuracies on newspaper titles, circulation, editorial personnel, etc.

  A comparison of ITU data on telecommunications with APT data (Table 3) also shows significant discrepancies for several Asian countries-Philippines and Thailand in particular. APT estimates that in 1998 Philippines had a telephone density of 8.1 percent compared to ITU’s 3.7 percent. For the same year, their estimates for Thailand were 12 percent and 8.3 percent respectively. The data for Malaysia, China and North Korea raise further questions on the population estimates each organization uses to determine telephone density in a country.

Shelton Gunaratne, professor
Mass communications department
Minnesota State University Moorhead

Book Reviews

  Albarran, Alan A., & Chan-Olmsted, Sylvia M.
       Global Media Economics: Commercialization, Concentration and Integration
       of World Media Markets. Ames:  Iowa State University Press, 1998.  xii+362 pp.

Because mass media operate within dynamic systems, what one writes about them today may or may not be true tomorrow.  This book suffers from the one insurmountable weakness of any book describing the status of mass media (and of mass media consumers) in a given country or region: depreciation or rapid obsolescence.  Much of the information on media ownership patterns, circulation figures, cinema attendance, audience data, etc., can vary from one year to the next, as can laws regulating the legal, economic and social environment in which media operate.  I recall the early years of the current decade when a “global journalism” textbook was out of date even as its galley proofs were being returned to the printer.  At that time, both Eastern and Western Europe were changing, with the East undergoing profound changes in politics and economics, while Western Europe grappled with “single market” harmonization and expansion.  In both cases, market forces were hard at work, in different ways, fast dismantling years of “public” media institutions.

Things may be changing at a lesser pace nowadays, but Global Media Economics still runs the danger of containing obsolete information by the turn of the decade. If the book were to go into a second edition, the chapter authors would have to do careful updates.

In their introductory chapter, the editors offer “a framework for the study of global media economics.”   Doing a kindness to those mass communication researchers who may be naive about things economic, they offer a basic, yet very illuminating, introduction to such economic concepts as “political economy,” “market system,” supply and demand,” “theory of the firm,” and “industrial organization paradigm.”  Then they offer a rationale for the study of global media markets.

The bulk of the book (chapters 2-20) consists of individual country reports. The chapter contributors are residents of and/or experts on the media scene of each particular country or region.  Emphasis is on North America, the Pacific Rim and the European Community, representing the “triad global economy, the three regions that are of greatest strategic importance in today’s international marketplace [and] the three most important areas of the world for the U.S. businesses” (p.14). Of course, these last two words effectively limit the potential market for this book to North America, which, coming from media economists with a “global media economics” book to sell, sounds a bit self-defeating.

How well are the three regions of the “Triad” represented in the book?  “North America” gets adequate coverage with chapters on the United States, Canada and Mexico. Chapters on the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands and “The Nordic Region” (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland) represent the 15-nation European Union. The section on “Asia and the Pacific Rim” contains chapters on India, China, Japan, Australia and a chapter on the “Pacific Rim” (Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia).  Clearly, the book includes most of the major players, although one of the G-8 countries (Italy) and three of the East Asian economic “miracles” (Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia) are missing.

Editors were much more selective when casting for chapter authors on countries outside the “Triad.”  The section on South America” includes only two countries: Argentina and Brazil.  Granted, Brazil is the undisputed media giant in the region, and Argentina is perhaps the most “European” country in South America.  But what about Venezuela or Chile? And, by the way, why is the Pacific coast of South America never included in discussions of “The Pacific Rim”?

More glaring is the sparseness of material in the section on “Africa and the Middle East,” which includes only Nigeria, South Africa and Israel. No Egypt, Iran or Kenya; and no Turkey. Russia and the former Eastern Bloc countries are completely off the editors’ “global” radar screen, although some of them (like Poland) would have made interesting case studies in media economics.

On the positive side, the book is eminently readable, and the chapters are uniformly well organized. Trying to organize scholars, they say, is not unlike herding cats. It is to the editors’ credit, then, that they have managed to hold chapter authors to a suggested outline of country or regional background and context, followed by both general and in-depth examinations of major media industries, followed by an analysis of current regulatory, technological and market concerns. This information comes in a readable manner, with the occasional table and figure illuminating the textual material.  Each chapter serves as a good starting point for further research into the particular country or region.  The quantity and quality of references varies from chapter to chapter, but all offer at least half-a-dozen good leads for further research.  Anyone interested in the media systems of the covered countries, not just the media economist, will find useful baseline information about the selected media industries.

In their summary chapter, the editors review major trends affecting global media economics: The rapid economic, political and technological transformations in various countries that affect media industries around the globe; expanded global media concentration, exemplified by aggressive acquisitions on the part of media conglomerates; the liberalization of media industries in many countries; global media alliances; and the shift to a digital environment.   All these are meaningful conclusions, and the editors should explore in the future how those trends might apply in a truly “global” environment that includes more than the “Triad” countries.

The book ends with a very comprehensive index.

Despite its limited scope, this book is a good reference work, at least for a few years, for colleagues conducting research on the countries and regions mentioned.  Libraries should certainly stock a copy because it serves as a good historical reference work after running its primary useful course.   It will also make an excellent supplementary text for courses in “media economics” and “international mass communication.”

Yorgo Pasadeos, professor
College of Communication & Information Sciences
The University of Alabama

Cantor, Joanne  
      'Mommy, I’m scared’: How TV and movies frighten children and what we can do to protect them.
       San Diego: Harcourt Brace. 1998. xvi+249pp.

 Many scholars who tried to combine scientific precision with simpler language have failed. Only those with an outstanding academic reputation among the peers and those extremely involved with the topic of interest have succeeded. In this book, Cantor has succeeded where others have failed because she deals with an issue in which she has been personally involved as a reputed scholar.

Cantor is an expert on the effects of television on children, with special emphasis on children’s fright reactions. With this book, she, for the first time, addresses a more “general” but a highly affected readership: parents and others who provide child-care. She advises parents on how to deal with their children’s TV and media consumption and the children’s emotional reactions to different content. She explains what children are scared of, why their anxieties occur, how to possibly prevent those anxieties by choosing the right program and how to help a troubled child. She presents much of her experience on children and media derived from more than 15 years of her own research. Her findings are based on retrospective reports of university students, in-depth interviews, experimental studies, and a random telephone survey of parents.

In their retrospective reports, 96 out of 103 students recalled that a movie or a TV show caused fears and intense emotional reactions in their childhood. Beside immediate reactions like fear, crying or even stomach problems, exposure to such shows could cause intense and long-lasting responses such as sleep disturbances, nightmares, and refusal to be/sleep alone or engage in normal activities. Two-thirds of the 96 students reported that these reactions lasted a week or more while one-fourth said they still felt residues of the fears that a TV program or movie engendered. This statement from a student’s report reflects the intensity of the effect: “After viewing the film [”Friday the Thirteenth”], I had nightmares for weeks. I would even lie awake at night-with all the lights on-wondering how long it would take Jason and his twenty-inch blade to find me!”

Cantor has distinguished the varying impact on age groups. Using cognitive development theories and research, Cantor found that how something looked like affected especially young children up to age 7. Media images of vicious animals, monsters, grotesque or deformed characters, vividly performed injuries or natural disasters were among those that especially scared them. Thus preschoolers were not fully able to distinguish between fantasy/make believe and real people or events. The importance of visual performance diminished for older children, who were more affected by realistic threats and dangers that actually could happen.  Adolescents were more aware of complex/abstract fears or threats-which younger children wouldn’t recognize-such as economic problems, environmental devastation, as well as alien or occult forces. In this context, it is essential to note that TV news-increasingly more graphical, sensational and violent-has become more and more terrifying for children.

Parents face quite a challenge choosing the right TV show or movie for their children and predicting what could be frightening. Ugly looking witches in Disney cartoons may scare young children, or TV news-considered to be informative and educational-may be too hard for the older ones.  Special movie or TV rating systems may help parents choose, mostly by defining age guidelines. Cantor explains several U. S. rating systems, and she discusses the pros and cons, as well as the required improvements.  Furthermore, she draws attention to the V(iolence)-chip blocking system and the current public controversy over it. Needless to say that parents cannot always have full control of what their children watch because children could watch TV at school or at a friend’s home. Children may even work out strategies to watch despite their parents’ forbidding.

How should a parent react when a TV show or movie scares a child?  The age of the child, the content of the show and the kind of reaction should determine the appropriate strategy. Many logical explanations (e.g., “That’s just make believe”) won’t work for young children. Just being there, giving a hug or cuddly toys, and distraction help them most effectively. Older children are more responsive to explanations (e.g., a reminder that the horrible things are just fantasy). But difficulties arise with real-life happenings (e.g., as with TV news). Honest information, as well as preventive safety guidelines, will help cope with realistic threats more than discussions on low probabilities. Moreover, providing attention and warmth, in no case ignoring or belittling fright reactions, seems to succeed in helping children in each age category and various fearful situations.

Finally, Cantor pays attention to the very interesting phenomenon that horrifying and violent media content attracts many children and teen-agers.  The typical statement “We were scared out of our minds but we couldn’t take our eyes off the screen” illustrates the point. The author discusses several explanations why scary programs are so popular-including “morbid curiosity,” search for arousal and demonstration of courage. Throughout the different topics, Cantor provides a rich variety of data that she and her collaborators had collected from numerous studies. Moreover, by illustrating her explanations with vivid examples from the retrospective reports and her everyday-life experiences as a parent, she makes the reader more aware of the wide prevalence of media-induced fright reactions.    

Cantor has succeeded in serving not only parents and other caregivers but also the scientific community. Parents and caregivers will find an appropriate informative reference book that provides understandable strategies and explanations, advising without “dictating,” a clear structure (11 chapters) and brief summaries. The scientific community will benefit from the manifold theories and research results, as well as the helpful reference documentation for further examination. This book summarizes 15 years of Cantor’s study of children and the mass media thereby providing remarkable methodological and topic width of her research.

From an international perspective, we can say the following: The programs and content Cantor analyzes are international, the fears are international, and Cantor addresses readers in different countries by dealing with an important topic that has international significance.

Peter Vorderer, professor
Sina Zapfe, research assistant
Department of Journalism and Communication Research
University of Music and Theater Hannover

Ferguson, Marjorie, and Peter Golding, eds.
      Cultural Studies in Question. London: SAGE Publications. 1997. xxvii + 247pp.

Is cultural studies in crisis? Are cultural studies in crisis? While opting for singularity of subject-verb agreement, this book espouses a more pluralistic approach to cultural studies. And although its editors don’t specifically point to a crisis at all, referring instead to “the current restless dynamic abroad in the field as a whole,” such delicacy of expression will fool no reader. The tenor of this book is as plain as day: cultural studies should get real (literally) if it wants to survive and prosper. And it will survive and prosper only if it:

(i)   eschews or tempers its absorption with the likes of textualism, discursive strategies, polysemic meanings and French literary theory, along with postmodernism and all other fashionable “posts” and associated “isms”; and

(ii)  introduces or brings back to the fold a political economy and sociology of cultural policy, production and practices with its roots in a more pragmatic, empirically examinable and testable “real” world.

The editors have observed some encouraging signs that cultural studies is, indeed, seeing the errors of its ways, especially in Australia where scholars such as Tony Bennett and Stuart Cunningham have shown the relevance of policy study for understanding the “politics, economics and total culture of Australia’s media and cultural industries.”

But encouraging signs aren’t enough. What cultural studies needs for its internal disorders is a good, cleansing dose of sociology and politics mixed with an analysis of class and structural inequality. Cultural studies should return to the hardier but heartier regime that those old stalwarts of the British Left - Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and E. P. Thompson - had initiated. Their natural heirs - Peter Golding, Graham Murdock and Nicholas Garnham - are now ready to administer this regime, while Stuart Hall nods his approval in the background. (Golding et al. conjure up an image of an approving Hall in the form of carefully selected quotations - Hall is not a contributor to the book.)

The natural heirs - contributors all - may have a point. And having read the chapters of a reasonably diverse and very distinguished range of other contributors, including James W. Carey, Denis McQuail, Douglas Kellner, David Morley, Todd Gitlin and Angela McRobbie, I can only conclude that individually and collectively they do indeed have some valid and timely points - not many points, mind you, because the same argument is drummed home with a persistent and regular beat.

Whether other readers agree with this conclusion - or perhaps concession will, of course, depend on their own scholarly positions and dispositions within or without cultural studies. Some will easily digest the book’s preferred meanings, some will negotiate the text to fit their own preconceptions, while others - many others? - will adopt an oppositional stance, resisting and undermining the text’s dominant ideology (to borrow a notion). But wait!  This is perpetuating the very preoccupation with audience/reader reception that so much of the book decries, especially the idea of reader resistance, which may have had its moment under Hall but when taken up and embellished by John Fiske (after Hall the most cited author in the book) amounts to a kind of false hope that such resistance will create anything truly meaningful or useful, while drawing attention away from “real” social, political and economic forces that can be properly resisted only through social and political action.

So, taking a leaf from this book, one can dip into its preface (admittedly a text!) to glean a little of the political conditions of its production. All the contributors were panel members of a “theme session” organized by the editors at the 1993 annual meeting of the International Communication Association and designed to bring together “in constructive debate contrasting intellectual research traditions” in communications. The debate was “lively to say the least” and it was “heartening, and at times not a little alarming, to witness the passions and commitment aroused by the debate.” A case of generally like-minded panel members fending off the “lively” criticism of not so like-minded others, and then stung and alarmed by the passions aroused, proceeding to write their own explanations and justifications for a book that excludes contributions from floor-based “resistant” voices?  But this is only my interpretation of a few lines of text - Can one ever be free of these troublesome texts?  Surely, there are readers of this text and the text I’m reviewing who were present at, and even contributed to, that lively exchange of ideas. Would their empirical observations of the actual event confirm or contradict my textual interpretation of its “political” background? Would their “reading” of the debate be unanimous or would it vary according to their academic predispositions, etc.?

Hurrying on, I want more soberly to do brief justice to the book. It deserves this because it does provide an overview of where cultural studies has been and where it might be heading - invaluable material for honors and postgraduate students and those requiring updated primers, all of whom should be reminded, however, that although the book claims to embrace pluralism in cultural studies as a principle, it is hardly catholic in practice. Perhaps it’s just evening the score.

Some chapters stand out, albeit for different reasons. Gitlin is waspishly anti-cultural studies, but at least he’s up-front about it.  McQuail is predictably systematic, even-handed and earth-bound. His main concern is a cultural studies that is “flighty and opinionated,” and he wants “a more modest and self-reflexive media cultural policy project.” Supplying the first chapter, Carey wanders through the thickets of cultural studies history. Although ultimately rewarding, his uncharacteristically convoluted piece will frighten off many a bewildered student: It should have been interchanged with Kellner’s much more accessible and explanatory chapter. As always, Kellner manages to be both radical and sensible at the same time (although it’s impossible to be as sensible as McQuail), and his is one of the few chapters that attempts serious rapprochement with the textualists. Morley and McRobbie are good on ethnographic research and everything else they touch on.

In fact, despite the repetitions and the lurking one-sidedness, there isn’t a dud among all 13 chapters, plus the introduction and the preface.  If you’re a supervisor, don’t wait for the library to get this one. Buy your own and lend it - warnings and reservations are optional - to your cultural studies students. They will commence decoding immediately.

Grahame Griffin, senior lecturer
School of Arts
Griffith University Gold Coast

Melkote, Srinivas R., Peter Shields and Binod C. Agrawal, eds.
      International Satellite Broadcasting in Asia: Political, Economic and Cultural Implications.
      Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.1998. xiv+328pp.

Despite the proliferation of research on the impact of transnational television in the Asia region, it still seems only just able to keep up with technological and programming implications, as media corporations, powered by growing markets, continue to expand. Melkote, Shields and Agrawal have added an interesting contribution in the form of this collection of essays that places new research on the impact of satellite television (content and structure) within the context of South Asia, or more specifically, India.

The compilation progresses from an overview of the impact of satellite television on the state broadcaster and national identity, to a view of “localization,” cultural transcendence and increased regional expansions.  It provides for academics and other researchers (the language and methodologies tend to make this book “audience specific”) an overview of some of the major trends in terms of “political, economic and cultural implications.”

That subtitle raises the first problem I faced when reading the book. It may just be a personal preference, but the continued cleavaging of culture as somehow separate from politics and economics does not seem to be the most useful way to attempt to analyze cultural change. This is not the only book to take the cleavaging road; and perhaps it is time for researchers to wonder about the impact that the accumulation of such an approach could have on those collectivities who try to arrange social life (disrupted by modernization and its cleavaging tendencies) within a more holistic manner.  Rather, the examination of media effects within perhaps Bourdieu’s field of cultural production, or a similar configurative analogy could be more appropriate.

Shields does posit in his essay an approach to the study of media within a broader, more encompassing space; and in so doing he moves away from a priori assumptions of media imperialism. Beginning with how identity is constituted, he then locates media within that problematic. For example, he begins with the development of national identity in India, then examines the role of television in this process. The shift contextualizes the operation and reception of the media within an overarching system of meaning (identity construction) within which political and economic comprehensions are attached.

Despite a stated desire to examine media effects in light of new theories of audience reception, there is an apparent tone in the majority of the first section of the essays which slants toward the paradigm of imperialism. Pathania’s essay, on the response to STAR TV by Doordarshan (DD, the government controlled national network), does give a depth of analysis to the political economy of cultural products, and localization of content. However, the emphasis on political economy leads to an impression of multi-national imperialism in the face of a weak public broadcaster.  That television’s impulse is to “deliver the audience to the advertiser” (p.69), and that DD is “peddling soap and capitalist dreams to Indian audiences” (p. 76). Skinner and Kandath’s final essay, a review of those preceding it, highlights the contradiction in describing the “inexorable power” of media corporations, but stating a desire to attribute “vital agency” to the state and institutions.

The hyperbole is tempered by the studies that reinforce local media uses, and by Shield’s observation that there are tens of millions of people still in India with no access to television and therefore “not available to be positioned by Doordarshan’s texts” (p. 93). Melkote, Sanjay and Ahmed conclude their Madras-based study with the belief that the audience is active, “with definite reasons for their choice of media programs and their frequency of viewing” (p. 175). Cohen also concludes that differing audiences or “media constituencies” (p. 240) use media differently, pointing to a dynamic, fluid, heterogeneous zone of meaning creation in the ‘local consumption of global television’: the mediation of cultural values does occur, but cultural items such as language act as filters.

The title of the book is somewhat of a misnomer. All the essays in the first part actually refer only to India. In the second part, more general essays focus on media flows and regional trends within Asia, but particularly Southeast and East Asia. The focus on India can be said to be valid as it is the area in South Asia with the greatest proliferation of transnational media activity. However, the essays tend to focus only on Doordarshan, its relationship to the state, and its actions to compete with satellite television. That DD has become more commercially oriented, that it has privatized programming content, and that the state has intervened in cable regulation and limited uplinking, is reiterated throughout several essays. Unfortunately, much of the information is repetitive and many of the same sources of literature are used, but it is a useful summary, with a great deal of compilation of statistics and facts useful for anyone undertaking research on television in India. An additional chapter just for the purposes of background and history would have perhaps allowed the authors more space to explore their individual areas of interest.

The state, represented by Doordarshan, is generally placed in opposition to STAR TV, as a representative of global capitalist trends. It seems the magnetism of Rupert Murdoch also works on academics. Several authors refer to the “phenomenal” success of STAR but without adding that audience rating systems at the time were very unreliable, without differentiating between the STAR networks (a universalistic sports channel versus linguistically particular general entertainment ones), and that Zee TV and other vernacular language channels are far more successful in terms of audience numbers. At the end of 1998, the STAR network (not including its investment in Zee TV) had only obtained a market share of just over 8 percent. Melkote et al. do place, correctly so, this latter point in the context that STAR’s impact is greater than its ratings suggest because of the type of audience who watch it. Das’s essay is the exception to the solid focus on STAR TV, examining a regional network within the paradigm of national identity construction.

There is a balance amongst the essays between those that give just a general overview of conditions and summary of effects, and those that employ qualitative or quantitative survey techniques. The first and second parts also provide a balance between regional and India specific data. As noted above, a drawback with any book at the moment examining transnational communication is that industry and technological change occurs so rapidly that facts are soon out of date, as it is with this compilation. Much of the information and conclusions have been available in other contexts earlier, although now at least the material is more accessible, and compiled as a reference text.

Melissa Butcher, doctoral candidate
Centre for International Communication
Macquarie University

Sussman, Gerald, and John A. Lent, eds.
      Global Productions: Labor in the Making of the ‘Information Society.’  
      Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press. 1998. xiv+317pp.

It is some 15 years since the last collection on this subject area (Mosco & Wasko, 1983) came out of the same left North American communications research/action tradition that gave rise to the Union of Democratic Communications. That seems like another era: before the collapse of state socialism and before globalisation and full-scale neo-liberalization.

The appearance of a work continuing this tradition is something of a shock. Does political economy still exist? Does it have something to say about communications, the media, culture (except that capitalists exploit, the state oppresses and that the United States is über alles)? Does it bear a message from or for labor (except to show how it is divided and to advise it to unite)? I suspected the book was going to rehash old formulae, to analyze rather than to intervene and to make ritual gestures in the direction of workers and of a labor movement.

Global Productions starts with a dedication to the communication and information workers of the world. David Noble, noted historian of technology, provides the prologue. Although Noble makes no reference to Marx and The Communist Manifesto, he writes in the same mode as the last of the Old Testament prophets-with both recognition and condemnation of the concentrated power of the gods of communication capitalism, and the divisions and sufferings of the increasingly informatized mortals who work (or don’t work) for them. The image and feeling condensed into these three pages are those spread over 1,500 in the work of a New Master, Manuel Castells (1996-1998, cf. Waterman, 1999).

Thirteen chapters deal with aspects of labor and the making of the information society, without quite getting to any convincing labor alternative to such. We have offshore labor forces, work in Silicon Valley, media labor forces in Hollywood, Canada and Malaysia. I will concentrate simply on where the book opens, with Mosco on political economy and communication; and where it ends, with Spooner on trade union telematics.  If Mosco tells us how to approach the matter, Spooner tells us what unions internationally are doing about it.

Mosco’s “Political economy, communication and labor” is a summary of a book on the topic. The collection is worth buying for this 25-page paper alone. I am skeptical about political economy in general because of its reductionist tendencies and/or imperial ambitions. It tends to subordinate all human life to such master categories as capital, state and labor, and/or to stretch political economy to encompass anything that classical Marxism failed to theorize-such as culture, communication and cyberspace.  First, we have schemata that cannot move labor (the original intention of Marxist political economy after all). Second, we would seem to have something synonymous with “social science”-in which, however, the labor movement is no longer the privileged actor. Mosco leans toward the second, but with considerable scholarship and a light touch. This is an invitation to recognize the power of communication theory grounded in political economy (PECT). Mosco reviews the history of PE (pre-Marxist, Marxist, post-Marxist, non-Marxist); he surveys such communication theory as it has developed in North America, Western Europe and the Third World; and he “rethinks” PECT in terms of commodification, spatialization and structuration (from the Marx-critic Giddens). He then makes room for cultural studies and policy studies. If Mosco does not, eventually, either show us how self-conscious and organized labor action is changing communication, or suggest how it ought to, this may simply be because he has not too much to report.

Spooner was, in the ‘80s to mid-‘90s, one of the pioneers of international labor communication by computer. His “Trade union telematics for international collective bargaining” presents the problem that Mosco has been unable to confront. Indeed, his very title reveals it in so far as the labor movement is here reduced to an institutional form, and its concerns to ritualized negotiation with capital and state. Spooner gives a sketch of his limited area, though even this has been seriously outdated by the explosive development of the Web over the past five years (cf. Lee, 1996). Talking about union strategy, he says, it is ironically, almost a mirror image of the strategies adopted by many employers as they come to grips with the full potential of telematics for international production and management. (p. 281)

The irony lies in the eye of the beholder. “Inevitably” is the word that comes to this reviewer’s mind. If international labor networking has now become a much more exciting place-and writing about it much more challenging, this is because of the independent activity of those at the shopfloor and those independent labor networkers trying to address their needs. These people have often absorbed the experimental, creative, guerilla tactics that the Internet allows, or learned it from non-labor others.

Back to labor and PECT. Although I express skepticism concerning the latter, I find it myself difficult not to stress the centrality to and in globalisation of capital and state-of commodification and administration/surveillance/violence. Yet the centrality of these as dynamic hegemonic forces does not, for me, have as corollary the priority of struggles directly against the one or the other. The most culturally or communicationally dynamic radical-democratic movements in the world today are those related to women, the environment and indigenous peoples. These have gained potency because they have recognized the import of capital and state, and they address labor both as human self-creative activity and as (re-invented) social movement. I am not sure that PECT can encompass, rather than challenge, all these.

References

Castells, Manuel. 1996-1998. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Vols. 1-3). Oxford:  
    Blackwells.
Lee, Eric. 1996. Labor and the Internet: The New Internationalism. London: Pluto.
Mosco, Vincent, and Janet Wasko, eds., 1983. Labor, the Working Class and the Media.  Norwood, N.J.:
     Ablex.
Waterman, Peter. 1999. “The Brave New World of Manuel Castells: What on Earth (or in the Ether) is Going
    on?’ Development and Change, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 357-80.

Peter Waterman, author
The Hague, Netherlands.

Venturelli, Shalini
     Liberalizing the European Media: Politics, Regulation and the Public Sphere. Oxford, UK: Clarendon
     Press, 1998. 316pp.

How long has it been since you’ve seen a book on the electronic media which took as its chief point of departure the writings of Hegel, Locke, Kant, Hobbes and other philosophers? This remarkable book does, and deftly connects them with the debate over liberalization of electronic media policy within the European Union. They are joined as sources by a host of other well- and not-so-well known names: Jefferson, Marx, Weber, Toqueville, Aristotle, Arendt, Habermas, Vincent Porter, William Melody.  Citations of European Union/Community documents abound, as do references to the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 and hearings that led up to it. The author, now a professor at American University, also indicates that she conducted more than 100 interviews with various European Union, European public service broadcaster and other individuals to inform her study, although very few of these are cited in the text.

The central focus of this monumental effort is a detailed examination of the European Union’s rationale for the development of a pan-European policy on opening the electronic media to competition within EU member countries.  Venturelli leaves no doubt that she feels a sense of betrayal on the EU’s part of a longstanding (until the 1980s) practice among European nations where the electronic media are concerned: to ensure that there be some protection of the public space. That is where Kant and Company enter in, because she weaves a tapestry that portrays the development of the concept of the public space over more than two centuries. Her chief argument is that, by espousing a policy of liberalization of electronic media regulation, the EU has opened the door to a commercialization of those media which will give rise to most of the evils already afflicting media regulation and practice in the United States, and which as a consequence will render virtually null and void any protection once accorded to the concept of public space.

Her argument is quite convincing (and very closely reasoned). It would have been even more convincing had she provided a fuller treatment of the reasons for the EU’s liberalizing bent. Those she does provide certainly have merit: the coming of Reaganesque administrations to several of the European nations; the perceived (by EU officials) need to liberalize on European terms before the United States moved in and exploited a rapidly growing commercial presence on the European electronic media scene; the conviction that commercial electronic media could be trusted to honor public service responsibilities without needing regulations that would compel them to do so.

But there is another, and it is important: there was a growing feeling in the 1980s among European politicians, economists and even some public service broadcast officials that the then-still-dominant European public broadcast organizations were over-bureaucratized, and as a consequence increasingly wasteful of public funds. Put another way, license fee and annual appropriation money was being spent more and more for the support of overgrown administrations, to the detriment of support for programming.  Also, the chief administrators of a number of those organizations seemed increasingly inept at, or desirous of, defending the notion of public service through broadcasting. And finally, the public itself seemed increasingly disinterested in public service broadcasting, and in many cases voted with its remote control devices (to paraphrase Lenin on the Russian Army). Those factors surely played a role in lessening opposition to the EU’s pursuit of liberalization.

In fact, the public service broadcasters are a minimal presence throughout the book, even though it seems evident that they are an important part of the EU’s decision-making context. The successful attempt by British member of the European Parliament Carole Tongue to bring about a 1996 vote strongly endorsing the need for continuing government/public support of public service broadcasting goes unremarked. The likely evils of unchecked commercial broadcasting are cast in colorful terms, such as the author’s prediction that this will result in “... the governance of civil society by concentrated, large-scale proprietary power of information which restricts entry to the public sphere by other private as well as all non-market entities (p. 231).” Yes, that could occur. But it is much the same accusation that a number of critics of public service broadcasters have raised in past decades. And it fails to take into account the growth of small-scale non-commercial radio stations, access TV operations, etc.,throughout much of Europe during the past two decades.

Still, I have the greatest admiration for what Ventureli has accomplished. I cannot begin to detail how she knits together the strands of arguments supporting the concept of public space, and how she juxtaposes those strands with the actions of the European Union which she feels will destroy this magnificent legacy. I could wish that she had knit with more accessible prose, as I struggled through this knotty sentence on p. 235:

“The confusion on all sides in the debate over whether and how to create more open competition conceals from us the important fact that competition is the more important to the political aims of information and the broadband multimedia age the more ‘imperfect’ are the objective conditions in which information industries have to operate.”  There are numerous examples like this, and she can do better, as she did in a European Journal of Communication article from December 1993. I hope she will. She has much of importance to say, and it would be a pity to reduce its impact through turgid prose. Even so, it is well worth the occasional struggle.

Donald R. Browne, professor and chair
Department of Speech-Communication
University of Minnesota

Von Felitzen, Cecilia, and Ulla Carlsson, eds.
      Children and Media: Image, Education, Participation.
      Goteborg: UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Children & Violence on Screen at Nordicom. 1999.
      483 pp.

The International Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on the screen has a laudable mission:  to keep an international community of scholars, industry professionals and child advocates abreast of current research and advocacy efforts on violence in the media (in particular) and children and the media (in general).  An offshoot of NORDICOM (which links researchers from Nordic countries to one another and to the larger international community) and funded by UNESCO, the International Clearinghouse has been an invaluable resource to those interested in tracking worldwide trends and noteworthy differences in children and media.  This edited volume is the third installment of what promises to be a timely and diverse series.

The 1999 edition called _Children and Media: Image, Education, Participation_ includes contributions from a diverse group of individuals and organizations working to develop children’s understanding of media and young people’s involvement in media. In their preface, the editors state that the idea behind the book is to present examples of media education and participation - in a variety of contexts and through a variety of channels - to inspire more and better of the same.  Indeed, they have realized their attempt to be inclusive and varied in the contributions from all over the world.  One can see the challenges and opportunities that arise in Western, industrialized countries, as well as developing nations.

The substance of the book is in four sections: 1) children’s access to media and media use; 2) the image of the child in the media; 3) media education and children’s participation; and 4) a resource guide that includes both declarations of children’s rights and media responsibilities and a listing of international agencies wholly or partially committed to researching, advocating or otherwise informing on these issues.

The greatest strength of this volume is the impressive breadth of the coverage of current projects and research on children and media.  Livingstone, Holden and Bovill’s chapter “Children’s Changing Media Environment” is a snapshot of this massive project’s efforts to capture the similarities and differences in how European children (from 12 countries) have access to and make use of old and new media.  It is a nice illustration of the Yearbook’s value in providing the most up-to-date information on on-going research.  Similarly, Mead’s “The Convention Goes Live” reviews the extraordinary growth of UNICEF’s International Children’s Day of Broadcasting by describing recent projects from Namibia, Ontario, Liberia and Thailand.  Such timely descriptions provide a flavor of both the diversity of projects that have resulted from the “day” and the impact of children’s efforts on how broadcasters think about the child audience.

The most memorable chapters are those that focus on the opinions and experiences of the children themselves.  John’s “These Are Our Stories” describes how teens in five countries learned to use audio/visual media to tell their personal stories through short films and provides anecdotal evidence on how the young auteurs grew from their experience.  “Kids These Days” presents recommendations from the young journalists from Children’s Express on the best ways to interview children and capture the essence of childhood (without being patronizing or dismissive).  It should be required reading for any reporter with a kids beat. 

The chapters that lay out the structure of the industry and economy of children’s media also deserve appreciation. Though one must search a bit to find such information, it is nevertheless useful to have a current text that illustrates the impact of these structures on the media and media literacy programs available to children.  Kumar’s “The Changing Media Scenario in India” details the proliferation of media in the early ‘90s and the lack of corresponding changes in the media education scene.  Prinsloo, on the other hand, examines the symbiotic relationship between political ideology and media education in post-apartheid South Africa.  These chapters take the reader beyond case study and anecdotes and encourage a broader consideration of media’s role in society.

As with most things in life, the strengths of Children and Media are also its weaknesses.  The breadth of the volume unfortunately results in a lack of depth for most topics of interest.  The structure of the book does not allow more than a thumbnail sketch on dozens of topics. (It has some 40 chapters, not including the introductory chapters and appendices).  Many chapters are extremely brief, and one is sometimes left with the impression that the author has not actually said much.  The diversity of writers (scholars, industry professionals, advocates, and children) also produces an uneven quality of the chapters.  Some, like Soares’ “Against Violence” are overly dense and jargonistic.  Others, such as Peijun’s “Children and Television in China,” read like simple propaganda.  Finally, because the essays are often about works-in-progress or projects on a shoestring budget, there is virtually no research evidence to support the many claims that media education and participation yields significant or lasting benefits.  Intuitively, such claims make sense.  Without objective, empirical evaluations, however, one cannot be sure.