Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 40
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In one sensethis is true. Most daily newspapers are distributedlocally, or regionally. Americans buy one of the big citynewspapers in addition to the smaller local ones. Therehave been attempts to publish truly national newspapers, e.g. USAToday. But it still has only a circulation of 1.2 million, which is notenough in a country where state, city, and local news and politicaldevelopments most deeply affect readers and are therefore especiallyinteresting to them. The papers with large circulation and national brandThe Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The WashingtonPost, and The Los Angeles Times not only print newspapers, but alsocollect and sell news, news features, and photographs to hundreds ofother papers in the U.S.A.
and abroad. Many other newspapers “borrow”news from the major American newspapers and magazines, so theirinfluence spreads far beyond their own readers. Political and editorialcartoons are also widely syndicated. Well-known political cartoonistssuch as Olyphant or MacNelly are known to most American and manyforeign newspapers readers. Comic strips from Jules Feiffer, GarryTrudeau, or the creator of “Garfield” are similarly distributed. Satire andhumor columns often have international reputations as well. Manynewspapers also use syndicated columnists as a way of balancingpolitical opinion.
The so-called op-ed pages (opposite the editorial page)of newspapers, columns from leading liberal and conservativecommentators are often printed side by side.Most American newspapers have Sunday editions, which are muchlarger than regular ones (some of them around 900 pages). Reading theSunday paper is not only English but also an American tradition. Gettingthrough all the sections can take readers most of the day, leaving justenough time for the leisurely Sunday dinner.A lot of newspapers are of the “quality” rather than the “popular”variety.
But the tradition of “muckraking”- digging out the dirt and157exposing it for all to see - is still extremely strong. When somethingwhich has been hidden behind closed doors about public figures,politicians, judges, policemen, generals, business leaders, sports figures,or TV and movie personalities. is brought to the front pages, it can appearin a lot of newspapers.The American press responds by quoting their constitutional rights andproudly repeating Thomas Jefferson’s noble words: “Our liberty dependson freedom of the press, and that cannot be limitedwithout being lost”.
The Freedom of InformationAct allows anyone, including newspaper reporters, toget information. Even small-town newspapersemploy reporters who are kept busy searching, forexample,ofpoliticalcorruption,businessmalpractice, or industrial pollution. Courts and judgescannot stop a story or newspaper from beingpublished.
Almost all American editors andjournalists agree that news should be separated from opinion about thenews as much as possible, and that opinion and political viewpointsbelong to the editorial and opinion pages. Therefore, when a news storyappears with a reporter’s name, it means that the editors consider it to bea mixture of fact and opinion.When the Internet first engaged the attention of the newspaperindustry, it looked like a new, cheap distribution medium. To paperssuch as The Washington Post or The New York Times the internetoffered a way of getting the paper around more of the country and sellingsuch products as data and analysis along with the paper.Besides newspapers, there are over 11, 000 magazines andperiodicals in the United States. More than 4,000 of them appearmonthly, and over 1,300 are published each week.
They cover all topicsand interests, from art and architecture to tennis, from aviation andgardening to computers and literary criticism. Altogether, there are about60 magazines in the United States that sell over a million copies per issueeach, and roughly the same number with more than 500,000 copies perissue. Quite a few have international editions, are translated into otherlanguages, or have “daughter” editions in other countries.
Among suchinternationals are Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News& World Report,National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Time,Newsweek, and Psychology Today .The best known professional158periodicals The Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Educational Review,Saturday Review, National Geographic, Smithsonian (published bythe Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.), Scientific American,etc. provide a broad and substantial forum for serious discussion andhave a huge readership both in the USA and abroad.Radio and Television. There are many different types and varieties ofAmerican radio and television: commercial, non-commercial, individual,etc. There are similar types of stations, but no one station is exactly thesame as another.
All radio and television stations in the United States,public or private, educational or commercial, large and small, must belicensed to broadcast, by the independent federal agency. The FederalCommunications Commission (FCC). Each license is given for a fewyears only and can be taken away if stations do not conform to FCCregulations.Several such regulations were made, preventing any single group fromhaving too much influence in any area. E.g., laws prohibit any state or thefederal government from owning or operating radio or television stations(stations such as Voice of America may only broadcast overseas).
Thereis also no governmental censorship or “reviewing” of programs andcontent. There are no governmental boards or groups, which control anyradio or television broadcasting. Rather, the FCC ensures that nomonopolies exist and that each area has a variety of types ofprogramming and stations. It also regulates media ownership: nonewspaper, for example, may also own a radio or TV station in its ownarea, nor may a radio station also have a television station in the samearea. No single company or group may own more than a total of 12stations nationwide.Another FCC regulation, the so-called Fairness Doctrine, requiresstations to give equal time to opposing views and to devote some part oftheir broadcasting time to “public service” announcements andadvertising free of charge: e.g.
advertisements for Red Cross blooddrives, for dental care, for programs on Alcoholics Anonymous and carsafety. With this “something-for-everyone” policy, even communitieswith only 10,000 or so people often have two local radio stations. Theymay broadcast local stories and farming reports, weather and roadconditions in the area, city council meetings, church activities, sportsevents and other things of interest to the community.
They also carrynational and international news taken from large stations or networks and159emphasize whatever might be the “big story” in the small town. The bigcities are served by a large number of local radio stations, of course. Forinstance, people who live New York, Chicago, or Los Angeleshave achoice of up to 100 AM and FM stations and many different “formats.There is also a great variety among television stations. The majority ofcommercial television stations buy most of their programming, roughly70 %, from the three commercial networks. ABC (AmericanBroadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), andNBC (National Broadcasting Company).
Two of the TV commercialstations in Louisville are “independent” and take their programs from awide variety of sources. The growth of public television in the past twodecades has been dramatic. PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) with its280 nonprofit, non commercial stations has become also very popular.There are plenty of cable systems serving the cities The largest cablenetworks are CNN {Cable News Network) which carries only news andnews stories and ESPN, the all-sports cable network, or MTV, which isfamous for its music videos. There is no nationwide system or policy oncable television.
Local communities are free to decide whether or notthey will have cable television. There are many different types ofschemes, systems, and programs. Some offer top-rate recent movies on apay-as-you-watch system, some offer opera and symphonic music. Allare willing to provide “public access” channels where individuals andgroups of citizens produce their own programming.
It does not appear,however, that the hopes once voiced for cable television will be realized.Cable firms are trying to offer something special to get many people topay for what they can normally see free of charge through regular publicand commercial stations.At present, no one seems quite sure what will come out of the cabletelevision, video, and satellite or internet “revolutions». The mainproblem is competition for people’s time.
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