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The Media And Foreign Policy

Edited by Simon Serfaty
Reviewed by By Gaddis Smith
Spring 1991
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Edited by Simon Serfaty
St. Martin's
1990
249 pp.
$45.00

The 17 contributors to this symposium are divided between former government officials and journalists. Criticism is directed fairly evenly between the media for occasional irresponsibility and the government for moments of excessive manipulation. The best essays are by R. Gregory Nokes on the U.S. government's media campaign against Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya and by Harold Evans on British restrictions on a free press. The editor concludes that American media coverage of international news is good, improving, and does not set the foreign policy agenda.

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