War Stories: Culture of Foreign Correspondents - Tapa dura

What are the influences on war correspondents as they report on events in war-torn countries? Mark Pedelty explores the lives, work and culture of the international press corps, examining the institutions, practices, myths, and rituals that shape the work of journalists everywhere. He looks at the context in which journalists construct their reports. By looking at how new stories are actually produced, the author highlights the elusiveness of the goal of "objective" journalism and illustrates how the biases of war correspondents are constrained by the powers of government and how these biases are translated into actual journalistic practices.

Mark Pedelty is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Miami University, Oxford. He has accompanied war correspondents into the field on excursions into the guerrilla-held territories of El Salvador.