This text provides insights into the changing forms, practices, institutions, and audiences of journalism. It looks at a number of issues, providing examples for each, and offering the reader an assessment of different critical approaches to the news media on both sides of the Atlantic. The book begins with a historical consideration of the rise of "objective" reporting in newspaper, radio and televisual journalism. It goes on to explore the way news is produced, its textual conventions as a genre of discourse, and its negotiation by the reader, listener or viewer as part of everyday life. Attention then turns to address the cultural dynamics of sexism and racism as they shape different instances of news coverage.