True/False
1. A major consequence of the imprisonment of journalists in Iran is that fewer news
organizations are willing to station reporters in the country.
2. The development media theory says that Third World nations need a different kind of
press than do nations with fully developed economies.
3. The first medium to move messages faster than a person could travel was the telegraph.
4. Canada and France have local-content laws that require their media to carry a certain
percentage of content produced within their own countries.
5. Broadcasting in Europe tends to be heavily regulated.
6. Only about half of the households in Western Europe own television sets.
7. Latin America has a growing newspaper industry.
8. Newspaper circulation in Latin America has fallen by 23 percent over the past seventeen
years.
9. Palestinians often use social and mobile media to bypass official Israeli government
censorship.
10. Small media, such as social media, video cameras, and faxes, are difficult to censor
because it is hard for the government to control access to them.
11. Satellite television is largely unavailable in the Arab world.
12. Reporters from Al Jazeera receive better treatment in the Arab world than do Western
journalists.
13. Al Jazeera Sports is a popular channel for sports news in Arab countries.
14. Media can reach most of Africa by using only three languages.
15. For refugees fleeing from Syria, inexpensive smartphones are typically their main source
of Internet and mass media access.
16. Russia has never had a tradition of a free press.
17. All India Radio is the dominant source of radio programming and news in India.
18. Talk radio is one of the most open venues for free speech in China.
19. During the Arab Spring protests and revolutions of 2011, social and mobile media were
used both as a source of news about the protests and as an organizing tool for the protestors.
20. According to Marshall McLuhan, our media industry makes the world seem to be a
smaller and more limited place.
21. The French newspaper Charlie Hebdo was attacked by terrorists after it ran an in-depth
exposé on corruption the Syrian government.
Essay
1. Why did Indian television reporters engaged in self-censorship during the Mumbai terrorist
attacks in 2008?
2. What are the five dimensions Alan Wells says we should use to analyze press systems
around the world?
3. What two Latin American countries produce the most television programming?
4. According to Kai Hafez, what are the three types of the press in the Arab world?
5. What are the “small media” in the Middle East?
6. What is Al Jazeera?
7. Why is it difficult to broadcast to large areas of Africa?
8. What are the two most prominent languages for newspapers in Africa?
9. Name two ways the Russian government controls its press?
10. During the Mumbai, India, terror attacks of 2008, local television journalists were very
cautious about what they did and did not report. In a brief essay, explain why Indian reporters
engaged in substantial self-censorship of the news they reported on the attacks.
11. You are an editor of an American newspaper considering reprinting cartoons from the
satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. First write an editor’s note defending the
publication of the cartoons, and then write one explaining why you are not going to run them.
12. In a brief essay, discuss the following issues. What are the “four theories” of the press?
What characterizes each of them? Provide an example of each.
13. In a brief essay, compare and contrast the media industries of the United States with those
of Canada and Western Europe. How are they similar? How are they different?
14. What is the development theory of the press?
15. What is the core of the Last Rights critique of Four Theories of the Press?