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From Disaster to Discovery: The Challenger Explosion [VHS]

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It seems that since its inception, television has reported on events which became the iconic event of a particular decade (i.e., Kennedy Assassination--1960s, Watergate--1970s, etc.). For those who lived through the 1980s the Challenger disaster was such an event. This tape does an effective job of providing ABC news reports of events prior to, during, and after the disaster. The program provides an actual sense of how the explosion was reported at the time and Americans' visceral reaction to the event. I used portions of the tape in a history of television course I taught. The reports were very effective in creating an emotional link from today's students to their counterparts back in the 1980s who were grappling with their own sense of helplessness and grief over world events they had no power to control, but which they felt compelled to respond towards.