Inventing warriors: US philanthropies and the post-war reorientation of foreign journalists.

摘要

This dissertation examines the history of the American initiative to reorient international journalists in the aftermath of World War II. The project focuses specifically on post-World War II international journalist training programs funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and administered by the American Press Institute (API) and the International Press Institute (IPI). I argue that at the height of an era in which American journalism claimed its independence and advocated the liberal professional model as an ideal it was ironically bound to the state. My research traces a web of interlocking institutions, people, values, and concepts that make up the high modern era of American journalism, from 1945 through the 1970s.;The seminars reveal a kaleidoscopic overlay of motives---from humanitarianism to anti-totalitarianism; from postwar reconstruction to cold war propaganda prophylaxis. American philanthropies and American journalists came to view the professional model of journalism as a legitimate measure to spread democracy and thwart the global spread of totalitarianism. Rather than focus on the effect the seminars had on their target countries, this dissertation focuses the way the seminars shed light on the history of American journalism. This study explores how the foundation-funded seminars contributed to the flowering of the objectivity norm, the genealogy of journalistic professionalism, and the mid-century sense of the heroic journalist. Though intended to shape the media cultures of America's recent wartime enemies, the seminars helped construct seemingly commonsense mid-century ideals about American journalism. How did mid-century American journalists come to embrace the values of journalistic professionalism and espouse objectivity as a professional (if not moral) code? Pitting journalistic professionalism first against the postwar and then the Cold War enemy other made journalistic objectivity and the professional ethos seem heroic. Professional journalists were seen as cultural cold warriors.;This study relies on in-depth archival research conducted at the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, as well as at the American Press Institute. This project adopts a sociologically-inspired approach to media history, and is grounded in the field of media and cultural studies.