WW
We've had a thread devoted to general books about television in the main forum, but it was archived a long time ago, so I thought it might be interesting to start a thread dedicated to books covering (or touching on) television news and current affairs in particular.
I'll start off with three titles:
http://cache1.bdcdn.net/assets/images/book/large/9781/8496/9781849666114.jpg
Image: thebookdepository.com
Steven Barnett, The Rise and Fall of Television Journalism: Just Wires and Lights in a Box? ; Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
I bought this book during a recent visit to London. It's a thought-provoking history of British television news -- from the BBC's audio-only news broadcasts to today's multichannel environment -- with frequent comparisons to the situation in the U.S.
Barnett's central thesis that the high standards and variety of British broadcast journalism is largely due to persistent government regulation, whereas Reagan-era deregulation has caused a decline in the quality of TV news in the U.S. One may not agree with all of Barnett's conclusions or accept that heavy-handed regulation is still possible in a 21st century media environment, but the book makes both a compelling case and an intriguing read.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51H9FxbAPzL.jpg
Image: Amazon.com
Timothy Green; The Universal Eye: World Television in the Seventies , Bodley Head, 1972. (British edition)
Timothy Green; The Universal Eye: The World of Television , Stein and Day, 1972. (U.S. edition)
I mentioned Green's The Universal Eye in the old thread, but because the book is such a wonderful time capsule of television 40 years ago that it's worth mentioning again. Green, a British journalist, presents a lively account of television around the world -- from the U.S. to fledgling African nations -- as it existed in 1972. (And how different the world was back then: New Delhi was the only Indian city with a television station, and even that service was mostly educational. South Africa had no TV at all. Japan, meanwhile, was already using computer-driven continuity, and Soviet TV was being distributed by satellite.)
The book doesn't deal solely with television news, but it covers news and current events to some extent in every chapter. This, for example, is how Green describes TV Patrol, a local newscast in Manila (which is still around today):
"In the early evening ABS-CBN run a two-hour programme called Patrol which is really just a public noticeboard for the city of Manila. All kinds of local titbits turn up. Insurance agents are advised that their exams have been postponed. Boy scouts are told where to report to a jamboree. Payment is offered for 500 cc of a rare type of blood urgently required to help a fourteen-year-old boy suffering from bone cancer; anyone who can offer a transfusion is asked to phone the studio immediately. Even photographs and descriptions of several children missing from home in the slums of Manila are given. Patrol calls itself 'the public service programme that makes a city move' and it outranks the imported Bonanza in the ratings."
Green also deals with subjects such as East German propaganda newscasts and TV coverage of the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QJVXFJKXL.jpg
Image: Amazon.com
Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN , HarperCollins, 2001.
Schonfeld was the first president of CNN and came up with the channel's original format. In this book, Schonfeld describes the serious obstacles faced by CNN before it went on the air, the widespread doubts that a 24-hour news channel -- the world's first -- could ever survive, CNN's ultimate success and its mixed journalistic legacy, as well as the problems it has experienced since the advent of competition. It was Schonfeld, rather than Turner, who came up with the idea of an open-plan newsroom from which breaking news items would be shared with the audience the moment they were received -- a novel concept at the time, but later adopted by news channels around the world.
Schonfeld's book can sound a bit bitter and self-serving at times (he was fired by Turner after just two years), but for the most part, it's a passionate, first-hand account of CNN's history and how the network eventually lost its way (even from a 2001 perspective).
I'll start off with three titles:
http://cache1.bdcdn.net/assets/images/book/large/9781/8496/9781849666114.jpg
Image: thebookdepository.com
Steven Barnett, The Rise and Fall of Television Journalism: Just Wires and Lights in a Box? ; Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
I bought this book during a recent visit to London. It's a thought-provoking history of British television news -- from the BBC's audio-only news broadcasts to today's multichannel environment -- with frequent comparisons to the situation in the U.S.
Barnett's central thesis that the high standards and variety of British broadcast journalism is largely due to persistent government regulation, whereas Reagan-era deregulation has caused a decline in the quality of TV news in the U.S. One may not agree with all of Barnett's conclusions or accept that heavy-handed regulation is still possible in a 21st century media environment, but the book makes both a compelling case and an intriguing read.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51H9FxbAPzL.jpg
Image: Amazon.com
Timothy Green; The Universal Eye: World Television in the Seventies , Bodley Head, 1972. (British edition)
Timothy Green; The Universal Eye: The World of Television , Stein and Day, 1972. (U.S. edition)
I mentioned Green's The Universal Eye in the old thread, but because the book is such a wonderful time capsule of television 40 years ago that it's worth mentioning again. Green, a British journalist, presents a lively account of television around the world -- from the U.S. to fledgling African nations -- as it existed in 1972. (And how different the world was back then: New Delhi was the only Indian city with a television station, and even that service was mostly educational. South Africa had no TV at all. Japan, meanwhile, was already using computer-driven continuity, and Soviet TV was being distributed by satellite.)
The book doesn't deal solely with television news, but it covers news and current events to some extent in every chapter. This, for example, is how Green describes TV Patrol, a local newscast in Manila (which is still around today):
Quote:
"In the early evening ABS-CBN run a two-hour programme called Patrol which is really just a public noticeboard for the city of Manila. All kinds of local titbits turn up. Insurance agents are advised that their exams have been postponed. Boy scouts are told where to report to a jamboree. Payment is offered for 500 cc of a rare type of blood urgently required to help a fourteen-year-old boy suffering from bone cancer; anyone who can offer a transfusion is asked to phone the studio immediately. Even photographs and descriptions of several children missing from home in the slums of Manila are given. Patrol calls itself 'the public service programme that makes a city move' and it outranks the imported Bonanza in the ratings."
Green also deals with subjects such as East German propaganda newscasts and TV coverage of the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QJVXFJKXL.jpg
Image: Amazon.com
Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN , HarperCollins, 2001.
Schonfeld was the first president of CNN and came up with the channel's original format. In this book, Schonfeld describes the serious obstacles faced by CNN before it went on the air, the widespread doubts that a 24-hour news channel -- the world's first -- could ever survive, CNN's ultimate success and its mixed journalistic legacy, as well as the problems it has experienced since the advent of competition. It was Schonfeld, rather than Turner, who came up with the idea of an open-plan newsroom from which breaking news items would be shared with the audience the moment they were received -- a novel concept at the time, but later adopted by news channels around the world.
Schonfeld's book can sound a bit bitter and self-serving at times (he was fired by Turner after just two years), but for the most part, it's a passionate, first-hand account of CNN's history and how the network eventually lost its way (even from a 2001 perspective).
Last edited by WW Update on 8 June 2014 6:32pm - 3 times in total
