China Reporting

An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s

Stephen R. MacKinnon, Oris Friesen

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520302518
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520310858
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

China Reporting is an oral history showing how the China correspondent of the 1930s and 1940s constructed his or her news reality or the network of facts from which their stories were written. How these men and women pooled information and decided upon the legitimacy of particular sources is explored. The influences of competition, language facility (or lack thereof), common personal backgrounds, camaraderie, and changes in American official China policy are also discussed, with special attention paid to the prescriptive, gatekeeping role of editors back home. This is an approach which has often been applied to the domestic journalist. China Reporting is a pioneering effort at using historical perspective to view the foreign correspondent in terms fo the total epistemological context in which he or she operates to produce the news that in turn provides the data base upon which the public and policy makers inevitably draw. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Note on Romanization and Typographic Conventions
• Cast of Characters
• Chronology
• Introduction
• 1. Henry Luce and the Gordian Knot
• 2. The Shanghai Scene in the 1930s
• 3. Romantic Hankow, 1938
• 4. Chungking: A Different Time and A Different Place
• 5. Newsgathering and Censorship
• 6. The Gatekeepers: Deciding What Finally Reaches the Reader
• 7. The Missed Stories
• 8. Political Objectivity and Personal Judgments
• 9. Press Coverage of China, American Government Policy, and Public Opinion
• 10. Conclusion
• Notes
• Glossary
• Selected Additional Readings
• Index