Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991

Since its first broadcasts, television news has revolutionized public life and political policy making, transformed political careers, advanced civil rights, and radically changed newspapers and magazines. This book recounts key episodes and analyzes the areas of American public life most affected by television news. Stories included are: the civil rights struggle in the South, the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy, the ups and downs of President Richard M. Nixon, the Iranian hostage crisis and President Jimmy Carter, manned space flight, and relief of the Ethiopian famine in 1984. Also described and reflected on is the impact of television news on presidential and congressional politics through the Reagan years and into the Bush administration. The changes in newspapers and magazines caused by the rise of television journalism is also explained through several gripping events that happened between 1989-91: the students' protest and its suppression at Tiananmen Square in Beijing; the fall of the Berlin Wall; and the collapse of the Communist empire in Eastern Europe; and the war in the Persian Gulf. -- Publisher description