Lights, camera, war

Is CNN running foreign policy by dictating which wars we care about? Are leaders' role being usurped by a media whose technology can communicate faster and more emotionally to an unsuspecting public? Johanna Neuman debunks the common wisdom that we are experiencing a revolution in communication technology's influence over political decisions. What she unearths instead is an unrelenting pattern of change whenever new media inventions intersect with the political world, from movable type to the Internet. With a journalist's eye for detail, Neuman documents that each age thinks the technology…