|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
Berlin Wall in the News. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Feb 2009, Pages: 328
The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the shocks
of history, heralded at the time the almost
unimaginable fall of communism and end of the Cold
War. The dramatic “Wall” events are replayed as
landmarks in television histories today; a reminder
that they were media events -- on a grand scale. This
book tells the story of the collapse of the Eastern
bloc from the perspective of the mass media; the
journalists who reported and documented what they saw
but could hardly themselves believe. The author was
there as one of the international correspondents. His
book records interviews with leading reporters and
editors who took part; revisits the actual coverage
from six major Western media organisations, and
checks those accounts against histories being written
ten years later. It considers also the perspectives
of political leaders of the era, and especially the
gigantic crowds in the streets demanding freedom. To
understand those crowds, well tested theories of mass
social movements, and their use of media, are
consulted in the book; and in the end an argument is
made, that in this new Century, history can be
understood very accurately from the news media, just
as it happens.
|
|
|
|
