International Stories Research Articles

‘It was a Serious Kitchen Knife’: Witnessing and Reporting Horror Crime

News reports of major crime can be linked to popular fiction genres. This linkage extends to the role of the crime witness and to the reporter as witness of crime and its aftermaths. It is argued that audience identification with witnesses and witnessing creates a ‘breathing space’ for reconsideration and reassessment of the crime. To illustrate how this might work in the reporting of horror and atrocity crimes, some newspaper ‘horror’ stories, and their relationship with horror fiction conventions, are discussed along with the television ‘eyewitness' reporting of international atrocity stories.

International Reporting in Canadian Newspapers: Results of a Survey of Daily Newspaper Editors

Research demonstrates that the press performs an important role in interpreting world events for the Canadian population (both the masses and the elites) and serves as an information conduit linking the government and the governed in the policy-formation process. This study examines both of these roles of the press based on data collected from a questionnaire that was mailed to the editors of Canada’s 107 daily newspapers in the spring of 1995. The data is also compared to that generated in a similar study of Canadian newspaper editors conducted in 1988. The study reveals that editors believe the mass public is much more powerful than newspapers in influencing Canadian foreign policy. Paradoxically, they rank international stories at the bottom of their hierarchies of importance, and the number of international stories published is declining. This limits both mass and elite input into the foreign policy process, and could prove to have a significant negative political impact.

US network evening news portrayal of the new South Africa

This study sought to understand how political changes in South Africa have affected coverage by the US network evening news programs between 1990 and 1996. A content analysis of abstracts from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive was done, continuing earlier work by Giffard & Cohen (1990) on coverage of South Africa from 1982–1987. The concern with lack of representation of international stories and with negative presentation of developing countries in US nightly news was investigated. The study found a steady decrease in coverage of violence, and an increase in coverage of government activities. Upon examining gender, political affiliation, and occupation of the sources in the stories, we also found a lack of diversity of sources in South African coverage. Overall, a gulf was identified between the actual situation and how it is portrayed.

Adding Value: Brands and Marketing in Food and Drink.

Market brands is one of the most prominent topics in business today. This volume sets out to discuss the impact market branding has had on major products and the business strategies which shape the success, or failure, of those brands. The economics of branding and accounting for brands are also dealt with. The volume traces prominent international success stories, revealing the surprises and strategies of some of the most familiar names in the market place, such as Coca Cola, Australian Wines, United Distillers. The contributions are from leading scholars in international business, economics, business history and marketing, and bring fresh international insight to our understanding of the development of market brands.

The Shrinking Foreign Newshole of the New York Times

The Times has fewer, but longer international stories than it did two decades ago, and the front page contains a higher proportion of international items.

Changes in the International Focus of U.S. Business Magazines, 1964–1988

About one of every six business stories focuses on international news, increasingly with a global emphasis, this content analysis of Business Week, Forbes, and Fortune reveals. The sample of 1964–1968, 1974–1978, and 1984–1988 stories finds there are more stories in the later than earlier period, but they are shorter so the amount of total space devoted to international stories has remained constant. Stories mention a U.S. connection about half the time. The relationship between U.S. trade and international coverage was relatively weak, with Western Europe covered more than U.S. trade would justify and the Americas covered less. Cultural ties proved as important as proximity.

Foreign and domestic news content of Chinese television

A sample from 10 weeks of the major Chinese national television news program was content analyzed; 559 news stories were coded according to duration, topic category, position in the newscast, and geographic origin. The 189 international stories clustered at the end of the broadcast and were significantly shorter than domestic stories. A plurality of domestic stories was from the capital, Beijing, and covered different topics than those that originated outside of China. Foreign and domestic stories were brief and provided little interpretation or background.

The American Schlemiel Abroad: Malamud's Italian Stories and the End of American Innocence

What is an American? The question asked by the French immigrant Hector St. John de Crevecoeur even before the Revolutionary War was at an end has haunted many Americans down to our own time. Our colonial beginnings left us with the task of defining our national identity, and from the same source came the habit of defining it in terms of our deviation from European patterns-social, political, moral, cultural patterns-a habit reinforced by later waves of immigration. All white Americans, after all, have European ancestors. This is why until recently most of our major novelists sooner or later felt they had to come to terms with the Old World and why many of them have explored their relationship to it by writing international stories and novels in which Americans are brought in contact and conflict with Europeans and European ways of life.