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WATCHDOG AND ADVERSARY MODELS OF THE MEDIA Spokespersons for the media regularly portray them as the country's watchdogs, who 'root about in our national life, exposing what they deem right [...]

Despite the great media interest in terrorism in recent years, William Perdue's Terrorism and the State has not been reviewed in any mainstream journal or national newspaper. It was issued [...]

Offers case studies of the newspaper coverage of similar events--the strife in Cambodia and East Timor and elections in El Salvador and Nicaragua--to illustrate that a propaganda framework is frequently applicable to media coverage of important issues, resulting in a possible absence of diversity of opinion. (PD)

Langs went out of his way to stress a congruence between Chomsky's alleged political views and the communication model where Chomsky's political views that were not the basis of the critique of the propaganda model is highlighted. Chomsky's views make no effort to support the model that concedes no legitimacy to state authority that is false as regards both the model and Chomsky's views.

Some of the Langs' major criticisms of the propaganda model that is described in 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media as well as a few other points relating to Noam Chomsky alone is briefly answered. LangEs objections to ChomskyEs references to Walter Lippmann in informal talks are highlighted.

The article presents the author's views about the article "Human Rights and University Contracts," by David Frisch that was published in the February 1979 issue of the journal "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists." Frisch in his article stated that universities can help in the fight for human rights in the world by using their bargaining power in support of that struggle. But, the objective to which his article is dedicated is fully dominated by his carelessness with fact and logic in discussing human rights issues.

In recent years, one of the principal arguments leveled against proposed bank mergers and relaxations of restrictions on branch banking has been that consolidations of small banks into larger institutions tend to reduce the availability of bank credit to small business customers. This is said to result from the fact that small banks, unable to service large customers, must of necessity lend to small borrowers, while large banks can and do make a substantial volume of loans to large firms. The statistical foundation for this argument is the data on loans to large, medium-sized, and small borrowers by banks of various size classes, which has been developed out of the Business Loan Surveys of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. The Business Loan Survey conducted in 1957, shows that in that year over half the dollar amount of outstanding loans of the largest banks, those with deposits exceeding one billion dollars, was to large borrowers and less than 10 percent was to small borrowers. In contrast, about half the loan volume of the smallest banks was to small borrowers and most of the balance was to medium-sized customers. The intermediate size classes show a steady progression between these extremes, with bank size positively correlated with percentage of loan volume going to large borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management fee rate is only one of a number of issues on which there may be a potential conflict of interest between mutual fund shareholders and investment advisers. Other issues of this nature, discussed at length in A Study of Mutual Funds and which might equally well have been used to illustrate the problem of conflict of interest, are the use of reciprocal brokerage to reward sellers of mutual fund shares, and the over-all effort devoted to selling new mutual fund shares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]