A Force for Good How the American News Media Have Propelled Positive Change [Hardcover]

Rather than writing a long narrative that tries to connect various themes,?Streitmatter provides a series of vignettes that examine specific issues?ranging?from how society treats its citizens to civil rights and gender. ?Although this format can sometimes be chaotic, the author breaks each issue/chapter, 16 in all, into easily digestible chunks so that readers can go right to the topic at hand. ?This is&a good book for those new to an issue and for novice researchers, who can get a head start on where to look?for context and analytical viewpoints. ?Though at times?the relationship between the news media and the issues seems peripheral or even tangential to the discussion, the book offers readers a chance to get the basic facts and then think about the relationship to the mediahow the media framed an issue and thus used it for good or ill. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers.At a time when Americas news media are everyones punching bag and bear the brunt of a laundry list of criticisms: too negative, sensationalistic, profit-oriented, ideologically biased, or even unpatriotic and lacking diversity in the newsroom. Rodger Streitmatter, a professor of journalism at American University, serves as a cheerleader for the news media. He argues that although news media deserve much of the criticisms, American news media have played an important role in making America a better place. A Force for Good: How the American News Media Have Propelled Positive Change documents an impressive list of news medias accomplishments in improving Americas well-being in various areas: cleaning up the countrys worst neighborhoods, protecting Americas child labor laws, creating a better life for African Americans, exposing and closing down the original Ponzi scheme, assuring law-abiding citizens that 'G-Men' (federal agents) were keeping them safe, stopping smokers from killing themselves, documenting the horrible conditions in mental institutions, exlS.