Media Effect

Jim Willis is a former newspaper reporter and editor for the Oklahoman and the Dallas Morning News who has been teaching journalism at the university level since 1980. He holds a Ph.D. in Journalism from the University of Missouri, and he currently chairs the Department of Communication Studies at Azusa Pacific University. He has held endowed chairs at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Memphis, is a former Communication Department chair at Boston College, and has been a professor at Ashland University as well as guest professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. Since leaving the practice of full-time daily journalism, he has covered numerous stories, including the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This is his tenth book on journalism and the news media.

Willis synthesizes the research literature on the American media, focusing primarily on the question of how media representations influence government decision- making, particularly the decision to go to war. He discusses how the media chooses what to cover and the media's ability or inability to cover stories accurately. He also discusses questions of media literacy, the symbiotic relationship between politicians and the media, and examples of how presidents have sought to manage media coverage throughout American history.