Stephen Bates

Stephen Bates is a professor at the Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Bates is the author, coauthor, or editor of four books, as well as academic articles on privacy, obscenity, libel, reporter's privilege, political advertising, and journalism history. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, and the Wilson Quarterly, where he is a contributing editor.

He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Articles by this Author

FDR Takes on the Press, September 2020 | Vol. 65, No. 5

FDR waged his own war on "fake news," specifically on the Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick.

Ike Shrugged Off Sputnik, October 1997 | Vol. 48, No. 6

Sixty years ago this month, the Soviet Union orbited a “man-made moon” whose derisive chirp persuaded Americans that they’d already lost a race that had barely begun.

The Ancient History of the Internet, October 1995 | Vol. 46, No. 6

Though it appears to have sprung up overnight, the inspiration of free-spirited hackers, it in fact was born in Defense Department Cold War projects of the 1950s.

… And Then There Was Usenet, October 1995 | Vol. 46, No. 6

To Fix The Press, October 1994 | Vol. 45, No. 6

Forty-seven years ago the Hutchins Commission issued the results of the most serious effort ever to define the duties of a free press. The free press was not grateful.

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