Janet E. Steele is a professor of journalism at George Washington University's school of journalism and an author. She published a book with a collection of newspaper articles from Indonesia. She also published a book about Tempo, an Indonesian magazine, during the Soeharto era in Indonesia and wrote a biography of Charles Anderson Dana. It has been described as covering "the complete history of the Sun.
Steele found that experts appearing on television news programs are typically from a cadre of former political and military elites.
She was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia.