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Nationalism, Business and Journalism: Japan and the Reorganization of the International News System, 1922-1935

Fri, May 25, 14:00 to 15:15, Hilton Old Town, Floor: M, Chopin

Abstract

This paper provides a new account of a pivotal event in the history of the international news system in the 20th century -- the establishment of direct relations between the U.S. news agency Associated Press and the Japanese news agency Nippon Shimbun Rengo in the early 1930s, and the end of AP's membership in the Reuters-dominated international news cartel as a result. Based on this example, the paper argues that the interplay of three different motives should be kept in mind when seeking to understand the system's overall evolution: the business strategies of news agencies, the interests of national governments in news dissemination, and journalistic ideas about how news organizations should operate. The paper demonstrates the complex manner in which business concerns (especially about competition), nationalistic motives, and normative ideas about journalism sometimes conflicted with and sometimes reinforced each other.

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