Books by Stephen Hess

Surveys press relations with the US federal government, examines the way official press offices prepare and conduct briefings, and considers criticisms concerning the government's control of information.

What happens when a conservative president makes a liberal professor from the Ivy League his top urban affairs adviser? The president is Richard Nixon, the professor is Harvard's Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Of all the odd couples in American public life, they are probably the oddest. Add another Ivy League professor to the White House staff when Nixon appoints Columbia's Arthur Burns, a conservative economist, as domestic policy adviser. The year is 1969, and what follows behind closed doors is a passionate debate of conflicting ideologies and personalities.Who won? How? Why? Now nearly a half-century later, Stephen Hess, who was Nixon's biographer and Moynihan's deputy, recounts this fascinating story as if from his office in the West Wing.Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927¿2003) described in the Almanac of American Politics as "the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson", served in the administrations of four presidents, was ambassador to India, and U.S. representative to the United Nations, and was four times elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.Praise for the works of Stephen HessOrganzing the PresidencyAny president would benefit from reading Mr. Hess's analysis and any reader will enjoy the elegance with which it is written and the author's wide knowledge and good sense.¿The EconomistThe Presidential CampaignHess brings not only first-rate credentials, but a cool, dispassionate perspective, an incisive analytical approach, and a willingness to stick his neck out in making judgments.¿American Political Science ReviewFrom the Newswork SeriesIt is not much in vogue to speak of things like the public trust, but thankfully Stephen Hess is old fashioned. He reminds us in this valuable and provocative book that journalism is a public trust, providing the basic information on which citizens in a democracy vote, or tune out.¿Ken Auletta, The New Yorker

What happened to the reporters within their organizations? Did they change jobs? Move from reporter to editor or producer? Jump from one type of medium to another -from print to TV? Did they remain in Washington or go somewhere else? Which ones left journalism? Why? Where did they go? This book examines career patterns in American journalism.

In the vast literature on the way democratic governments work, the role of the press is often overlooked. Stephen Hess focuses on those who cover the US government for the American commercial news media. His book is based on interviews with reporters and editors and on responses to questionnaires from nearly half of the over 1,200 American reporters in Washington.

The period from Election Day to Inauguration Day in America seems impossibly short. Newly elected U.S. presidents have less than eleven weeks to construct a new government composed of supporters and strangers, hailing from all parts of the nation.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, the White House staff numbered fewer than fifty people. In the ensuing years, as the United States became a world power and both the foreign and domestic duties of the president grew more complex, the White House staff has increased twentyfold.

What information about the world are we given by the mainstream media? How much? How good? By whom? Through what means? And how much foreign news is really enough? Stephen Hess addresses these questions and offers a revealing look at how the print and broadcast media cover international affairs and how foreign correspondents do their work.

Americans often forget that, just as they watch the world through U.S. media, they are also being watched. Foreign correspondents based in the United States report news and provide context to events that are often unfamiliar or confusing to their readers back home.