Imperialism, Media, and the Good Neighbor: New Deal Foreign Policy and United States Shortwave Broad...

<jats:p> In Imperialism, Media, and the Good Neighbor, Professor Fred Fejes of Florida Atlantic University races and analyzes United States shortwave broadcasting policy towards Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s. While the majority of the book consists of a narrative explanation of this policy, based chiefly on documentary research, to me the book's primary interest is the attempt by the author to integrate the private broadcaster/government rivalry within the modem framework of "Media Imperialism", defined by Fejes as "the process by which modem communications media have operated to create, maintain and expand systems of dominance and dependence on a world scale." (1) For Fejes, communications represents one of a number of factors used by the United States in an integrated way to fashion hegemony over Latin America, and he finds the process whereby shortwave broadcasting was used in this respect not only interesting in its own right, but also illustrative of global United States foreign policy approaches following World War 11. </jats:p>