What's News: The Media in American Society

The twelve thought-provoking essays comprising What's News review recent trends and events that have serious implications for both print and broadcast media in America. These timely studies examine the modern American media in its social, economic, and political context and address issues of current concern regarding the media's approach to and treatment of news. What's News focuses on the growth of the news business as big business and considers the rights of readers and viewers, the accountability of the media to their audience, and recent court decisions on First Amendment cases.

ELIE ABEL came to Stanford University in 1979 as Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication after nine years at Columbia University, where he was Godfrey Lowell Cabot Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. Formerly with the New York Times as national and foreign correspondent and head of its Balkan and South Asian bureaux, in 1961 he joined NBC News as State Department correspondent, London bureau chief, and diplomatic correspondent. He is the author of three books-The Missile Crisis (1966, reprinted in nine languages), Roots of Involvement: The U.S. in Asia (1971), written in collaboration with Marvin Kalb, and Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin (1975), written with W. Averell Harriman. Abel has received two awards from the Overseas Press Club, a Peabody Award, and he shared the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Eastern Europe. He served as the U.S. member of UNESCO's MacBride commission which recently concluded a two-year study of international communication problems, and in 1980 he attended the 21st UNFBCO General Conference at Belgrade, Yugoslavia, as a member of the U.S. delegation.