Foreign Correspondent

Abstract

This chapter examines Seldes’ years as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune where he saw how publishers’ personal biases and commercial interests shaped international news and domestic public opinion during America’s early globalization. Seldes reported on the famine in Russia, the bombardment of Damascus and the Vienna Uprisings, and he increasingly saw how news was distorted. It was after he had reported on the violence in Mussolini’s Italy that he began to seriously critique journalism practices and advocate for a factual but more interpretative approach to foreign reporting to help explain events to American citizens who had up until this time adopted a largely isolationist position, which made them vulnerable to the growing political instability in Europe.