War and Television (Haymarket) [Hardcover]

Bruce Cumings (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992 | Series: Haymarket

This work studies television reporting of the US at war since World War II, including detailed coverage of television's role in the Gulf. Cumings offers insights into the everyday operations of the media and assesses the possibilities of mobilizing them for political purposes. At the centre of this volume is the tale of Cumings' own experience as expert consultant to a Thames Television production - "Korea: The Unknown War". The book also features film reviews, anecdotes and several invectives against an array of media executives, retired soldiers and bureaucrats.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cumings ( The Origins of the Korean War ) gets a good deal off his chest in this long-winded, rambling meditation on what he sees as television's distorted reporting of America's last three major wars. His text is heavy with ad hominem attacks that seem irrelevant to his theme: P. J. O'Rourke is guilty of "stinking racism"; Patrick Buchanan and Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine are "schoolyard bullies with brains to match"; and Ronald Reagan is, predictably, "an empty man." The author even finds time to ridicule the easy (not to mention passe) target of Deborah Norville. Cumings, a professor of Asian and international history at the University of Chicago, served as a consultant for the Thames Television/PBS series Korea: The Unknown War , and here he complains at tedious length that the producers didn't follow his expert advice. The only chapter worth reading is an account of Cumings's trip to North Korea to interview citizens about the 1950-53 war, of particular interest for his tolerant view of that brutally repressive state. Illustrations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

An eloquent critique, from a politically progressive perspective, not only of TV's coverage of war but also of its treatment of topical and historical events and of ``politics in contemporary America--an imperious, camouflaged politics known best to those who transgress implicit limits, tread on unvoiced premises [and] traffic in the heterodox....'' Cumings (East Asian and International History/Univ. of Chicago) uses TV's coverage of Vietnam and the Gulf War as a way of analyzing the assumptions underlying its treatment of all sorts of political issues. Drawing on his own experience as an expert consultant on a TV documentary about recent American wars, Cumings shows strikingly how a type of consensus evolves about America's role in wars, a consensus that prevents alternative views from being expressed. The TV coverage of the Gulf War perfectly illustrates this situation, in which, Cumings contends, TV not only failed to present a sophisticated analysis of Arab culture or of the true issues in the war, but also allowed itself to be stage- managed into producing a false account of the fighting (the author claims that the precision of America's ``smart weapons'' was greatly exaggerated, and that the destruction wrought by the war was not adequately covered). Cumings argues convincingly that the purported ``objectivity'' of the camera is an illusion, and that TV is a medium that makes points and takes sides despite its supposed impartial coverage of news events. A provocative and intelligent analysis. (Illustrations--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: Verso (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860913740
• ISBN-13: 978-0860913740
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,986,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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