Global Journalism: Topical Issues and Media Systems

The editors have assembled twenty-eight contributors, all veterans of global media scholarship, in this important collection that concentrates as much on geographical regions as it does on the standard fare found in most textbooks on international communication. Of particular interest to those concerned with transnational broadcasting issues in the Middle East is Orayb Aref Najjar's meaty chapter on the Middle East and North Africa, a region of growing importance not only to regional residents but to the rest of the world. In fact, one would be hard put to find a better analysis and a more cogent history of the MENA region than Najjar provides in her forty-one page chapter that details the growth of print, broadcast, and alternative Arab and Israeli media, the latter often ignored in books of this nature. While the chapter on the Middle East is of particular relevance, those on other regions are equally useful for transnational broadcasters. There are separate chapters on Western Europe, Eastern Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Australasia, Latin America, and North America. John C. Merrill weighs in with two extraordinary chapters on global press philosophies and international media systems, Katerina Tsetsura and Dean Kruckeberg discuss international journalism ethics, Robert L. Stevenson offers a treatise of press freedoms around the world, and David Weaver briefly examines international profiles of journalists. What keeps this edition of Global Journalism from being an ideal college text or reference book, however, is the inexplicable absence of an index, a decision that should be reconsidered in subsequent printings. Relying only on a table of contents frustrates readers, students, and scholars who otherwise would consider this work a classic resource book. --Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal