Review by Choice Review
Those who continue to accept Fouad Ajami's oft-quoted claim that Al-Jazeera is "a dangerous force" can profit from reading this analysis of international media coverage of American government during the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. Farnsworth (Univ. of Mary Washington), Lichter (George Mason Univ.), and Schatz (president, Media Tenor Ltd.) use "what [they] believe is the largest database of international television news content ever created" to show why this and other pieces of conventional wisdom about international media's coverage of the US should be revised. That Al-Jazeera gave even Bush "surprisingly favorable coverage" is only one of the surprises that emerge from the authors' data analysis. The analysis interrogates both well-established theoretical principles such as that there is an "international two-step flow" of media influence; and popular assumptions such as that sophisticated European media outlets flayed Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign (coverage of Palin was actually "far more positive in European media than in the U.S. media"). While the authors are better at presenting their findings than explaining them, their findings are sufficiently arresting to interest any media scholar. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates, all levels; graduate and research collections. R. P. Seyb Skidmore College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
