Book Review: American Journalism and International Relations: Foreign Correspondence from the Early Republic to the Digital Era, by Dell’orto Giovanna

Dell'orto Giovanna American Journalism and International Relations: Foreign Correspondence from the Early Republic to the Digital Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 287 pp.To many journalism students, Edward R. Murrow's universally recognized voice- "this . . . is London"-can always remind us of the heyday of American "foreign cor- respondence" shining in crucial moments of world events. For many scholars of international communication, the UNESCO debate on foreign news flow and New World Information Order in the 1980s still looms large in memory. Nostalgia may dispose one to lament the diminishing role played by foreign correspondents within international relations in the digital era.The decline of international newsgathering by professionals over the past fifteen years, in particular for newspapers, is disheartening. According to American Journalism Review (AJR), the number of foreign correspondents employed by U.S. newspapers has markedly decreased since AJR's first census in 1998. AJR identified 307 full-time foreign correspondents and pending assignments in 2003, which decreased to 234 in 2011. As for broadcasting, networks' airtime for foreign news has been in free fall over the years, with only the exception of National Public Radio.1 The industry has been so pessimistic about foreign correspondence that few find phrases like "demise of the foreign correspondent"2 and "death of the American foreign correspondent"3 exaggerating.While scholars and professionals continue debating the role of foreign correspon- dence in news production and broadly, in international affairs, the handover of owner- ship of one of the most prestigious newspapers known for its coverage of international news and foreign affairs and policies-The Washington Post-may evoke more thoughts on the future of foreign correspondence and the importance of international news in international relations, if it is not yet an "end of an era."Against this backdrop, Dell'orto Giovanna's newly published book provides a unique and timely investigation of the evolving role of journalism in international rela- tions. Emphasizing "what discourses in news media tell us about sociocultural mean- ings about the rest of the world" (p. 26), this book aims to unravel the complicated interplay between news media and foreign affairs.Taking a constructivist perspective on international relations, communication, and journalism, this book features a careful discourse analysis of more than 2,000 news articles covering twenty crucial global events over 150 years to answer such central questions as, "What foreign news has been covered and what discourses of the world have emerged in the American press?" "How do th[e] images [of foreign countries and the world] compare with U.S. foreign policies contemporary to them?" And how does the understanding of the world "shape both media coverage and actual policies?" (p. 26).The extensive historical research conducted in this book convincingly supports the author's core argument that the press has always been indispensable in international affairs; it offers a public arena where the American audience and politicians can make sense of foreign nations, the world as well as the United States's global role. The per- ceived foreign or international realities shaped by news media consequently "serve as the basis for policy and action" (p. 1).Four chapters are chronologically organized to report the findings of discourse analysis covering four defining periods of time, from 1848 to 2008, guided by the aforementioned essential research questions. Specifically, Chapter 2 focuses on five consequential events that took place in foreign countries between 1848 and 1900. Media discourses, as the author pinpoints, "parallel Washington's growing involve- ment in world affairs . . . and the establishment of the United States as a global power" (p. 35). Chapter 3 emphasizes five major international events from 1910 through 1937 when the United States took the global central stage. …