We, the Media

This study focuses on thirteen Hollywood films that, from the 1970s to the 1990s, assumed to represent the working practices of U.S. corporate broadcast media. The book argues that since such corporations position themselves as individuals before the law, so their film and news texts are carefully authored rhetorical manoeuvres. The structured genre analysis is also enriched by contextual histories which consider relevant legal, institutional and political interventions in the early development of the U.S. public media. This interdisciplinary approach is relevant in a study of film texts which themselves address vital contemporary concerns in media ownership, gender representation, mergers, free speech, new technologies, and the powers of market journalism itself. This book is designed, therefore, to serve the related interests of media educationalists, specialists in film, and students of U.S. media law and broadcast news histories.