Reporting the Post-communist Revolution / Edition 1

by Robert Snyder

Overview

The events of 1989 were the material of great reporting. They also revealed the power of journalism. Long before people in Central and Eastern Europe liberated themselves, they discovered democratic freedom, putting to print their own ideas and chronicling events of the day. Indeed, long before they had democracies in law, they had imagined them on paper.In the Solidarity network that produced books and leaflets and news bulletins, in the essays of Václav Havel, in the samizdat publishing house in Budapest that used a portable printing machine, Eastern Europeans demonstrated the organic link between journalism and self-government. They showed how journalism nurtures the imagination, dialogue, and honesty that are basic to democratic life.If history had ended in 1989, there would be cause for easy optimism. The changes that swept Central and Eastern Europe passed with relatively little bloodshed. But agonies of the former Yugoslavia, convulsions of the former Soviet Union, and enduring battles with censors and would-be censors bedevil emerging democracies. Not only does much remain for journalists to cover in Central and Eastern Europe, in some places there the fate of journalism is still an open question. For all these reasons, Reporting the Fall of European Communism explores, not only the events of 1989, but new stories that have emerged in Central and Eastern Europe over the past decade. This volume will be of interest to media professionals, academics and others with an interest in the power of journalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765807380
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	03/31/2001
Series:	Media Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert Giles is editor-in-chief of Media Studies Journal, senior vice president of the Freedom Forum, and executive director of the Media Studies Center. Formerly the editor and publisher of The Detroit News, he is the author of Newsroom Management: A Guide to Theory and Practice. Robert W. Snyder is managing editor of the Media Studies Journal, a historian, and co-author of Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York. He has taught at Princeton University and New York University.

Table of Contents

1: Reflections; 1: Stars in the Gutenberg Galaxy; 2: Radio and the Fall of Communism; 3: Until Old Cats Learn How to Bark; 4: A Fatal Error; 5: A Taste of Freedom in Russia; 6: From Hellholes with Love; 2: Media Systems; 7: The Genie Is Out of the Bottle; 8: Transitions—A Regional Summary; 9: Naked Bodies, Runaway Ratings; 10: Gazeta Wyborcza at 10; 11: Transforming Hungarian Broadcasting; 12: Lessons for the Media from Foreign Aid; 13: Wall Fall Profits, Wall Fall Losses; 3: New Stories; 14: Civil Society and the Spirit of 1989; 15: Poisonous Neglect; 16: How I Became a Witch; 17: Roma in the Hungarian Media; 18: Business Reporting in Eastern Europe; 19: The Renaissance of Jewish Media; 20: Struggles for Independent Journalism; 21: B92 of Belgrade; 22: Seeing Past the Wall; 4: Review Essay; 23: Power from the People