Why did major news outlets virtually ignore the only cost-effective plan for universal health care coverage—even though polls showed the plan had majority support? Why did leading journalists go out of their way to attack Bill Clinton’s rivals in the 1992 Democratic primary—while focusing unprecedented attention on Clinton’s personal life? Why do establishment media consider falling unemployment to be bad news? In the tradition of I.F. Stone and George Seldes, the contributors to The FAIR Reader probe the often mysterious connections between press and politics in the 1990s. The essays are filled with startling information about the critical issues of our time—from the Gulf War and the Clarence Thomas hearings to the debates over health care reform and NAFTA—documenting the deceptive, one-sided mainstream reporting that leaves the public in the dark. Particular attention is paid to the election of 1992 and the Clinton administration, showing how the media promoted, undercut, and finally shaped Clinton to fit a media agenda, the book demonstrates that systematic media bias poses a threat to the democratic process and the free flow of information to the U.S. citizenry. FAIR, founded in 1986, is the national media watch group dedicated to the principle that independent, aggressive, and critical media are essential to an informed democracy. In the nine years since FAIR was launched, it has gained national recognition for its well-documented studies of media bias, its challenge to powerful media figures like Rush Limbaugh, and its award-winning journal of media criticism and politics, Extra!. The FAIR Reader collects Extra!’s most incisive reporting on journalism and politics in the ‘90s. It will be invaluable to anyone interested in decoding the media agenda behind the daily news.
Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures. The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them. Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English. As of October 2024, this e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
This full-blown parody of The Sharper Image--a catalog of state-of-the-art toys, gifts, and gadgets--features the most outrageous and technologically advanced equipment ever made available to the public. Becker and Mayer are the bestselling creators of Where's Dan Quayle? and Good Dog, Millie. 100 full-color illustrations.
There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read and it doesn't very often amount to much. Whether it is different this time than it has ever been before, I believe the Republican Party has a platform that is a banner of bold, unmistakable colors, with no pastel shades." –Ronald Reagan, 1976 Republican National Convention When Ronald Reagan was called to the podium by President Ford during the 1976 Republican National Convention, he had no prepared remarks. But the unrehearsed speech he gave that night is still regarded as one of the most moving speeches of his political career. The reason he was able to give such a powerful speech on a moment's notice was that he was proclaiming the core principles of his heart and soul, which he had been teaching and preaching for years. The New Reagan Revolution reveals new insights into the life, thoughts, and actions of the man who changed the world during the 1980s. The challenges and threats we face today are eerily similar to the conditions in the world before the beginning of the Reagan era. The good news is that we already know what works. Ronald Reagan has given us the blueprint. This book is not merely a diagnosis of our nation's ills, but a prescription to heal our nation, rooted in the words and principles of Ronald Reagan. In these pages, you'll find a plan for returning America to its former greatness, soundness, and prosperity. It's the plan Ronald Reagan developed over years of study, observation, and reflection. It's a plan he announced to the nation, straight from his heart, one summer evening during America's 200th year. It's the plan he put into action during his eight years in office as the most effective president of the 20th century, and it is the plan we can use today to help return America to its former greatness, soundness, and prosperity.
In President Trump and the News Media: Moral Foundations, Framing, and the Nature of Press Bias in America, political communication researcher Jim A. Kuypers takes readers on a rhetorical framing tour de force, this time incorporating elements of Moral Foundations Theory to investigate the ideological underpinnings of press reports. Using a rhetorical version of framing analysis, Kuypers analyzes four major speeches by President Trump and compares them with the reporting on those speeches by the mainstream news media. The moral foundations of both Trump and the news media are examined to assess their respective moral/ideological underpinnings. The results turn framing theory on its head by demonstrating how frames do not give rise to moral assessments as previously thought, but rather the presence of moral foundations provide moral substance to frames as they are developed and found throughout news coverage. The results reveal how journalists inject bias consciously and unconsciously into hard news stories, and that their moral foundations act to privilege liberal concerns and denigrate conservative concerns. Kuypers conveys how news media framing acted to treat President Trump not as a source of news, but as a political opponent while at the same time helping the political opposition of the President. By evaluating journalistic practices through the lens of their own published ethical standards, Kuypers argues that contemporary journalistic practices are damaging the American Republic and makes the case for immediate incorporation of viewpoint diversity within news organizations. Scholars of communications, journalism, and political science will find this book particularly interesting.
In Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States,Jim A. Kuypers guides readers on a journey through American journalistic history, focusing on the warring notions of objectivity and partisanship. Kuypers shows how the American journalistic tradition grew from partisan roots and, with only a brief period of objectivity in between, has returned to those roots today. The book begins with an overview of newspapers during Colonial times, explaining how those papers openly operated in an expressly partisan way; he then moves through the Jacksonian era’s expansion of both the press and its partisan nature. After detailing the role of the press during the War Between the States, Kuypers demonstrates that it was the telegraph, not professional sentiment, that kicked off the movement toward objective news reporting. The conflict between partisanship and professionalization/objectivity continued through the muckraking years and through World War II, with newspapers in the 1950s often being objective in their reporting even as their editorials leaned to the right. This changed rapidly in the 1960s when newspaper editorials shifted from right to left, and progressive advocacy began to slowly erode objective content. Kuypers follows this trend through the early 1980s, and then turns his attention to demonstrating how new communication technologies have changed the very nature of news writing and delivery. In the final chapters covering the Bush and Obama presidencies, he traces the growth of the progressive and partisan nature of the mainstream news, while at the same time explores the rapid rise of alternative news sources, some partisan, some objective, that are challenging the dominance of the mainstream press. This book steps beyond a simple charge-counter-charge of political bias in the news in that it offers an argument that the press in America, except for a brief period, was essentially partisan from its inception and has returned with a vengeance to its original roots. The final argument presented in the book is that this new development may actually be healthy for American Democracy.
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