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OverviewDateline Soweto documents the working lives of black South African reporters caught between the mistrust of militant blacks, police harrassment, and white editors who-fearing government disapproval-may not print the stories these reporters risk their lives to get. William Finnegan revisited several of these reporters during the May 1994 election and describes their post-apartheid working experience in a new preface and epilogue. Full Product DetailsAuthor: William FinneganPublisher: University of California Press Imprint: University of California Press Dimensions: Width: 13.30cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 20.30cm Weight: 0.318kg ISBN: 9780520089792ISBN 10: 0520089790 Pages: 262 Publication Date: 12 July 1995 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock  The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Table of ContentsReviewsAlong with the story of how black journalists manage to function, Dateline Soweto is also a fascinating history of the South African press. . . . Finnegan deftly articulates the delicate status of black reporters working for the white press in two wonderful chapters [which] while dealing specifically with the situation of South African journalists, could well be required reading for their American counterparts. --Jill Nelson, Washington Post Book World Compassionate, one-dimensional coverage of representative black journalists who play a critical role in the ragged, slow-motion revolution that convulses South Africa. In Crossing the Line (1986), New Yorker writer Finnegan recounted his experiences teaching for a year (1980) at a mixed-race high school near Cape Town. He returned to South Africa a couple of years ago and spent six weeks with a small band of black reporters from the Johannesburg Star, the troubled country's largest daily. During his sojourn, Pretoria's white-minority regime imposed a series of emergency measures, including press censorship, that made news-gathering riskier than normal for black correspondents. Their beats are the tinderbox townships and allegedly self-governing bantustans where blacks rage against apartheid and wage mortal combat amongst themselves. The only possible sources of accurate information on nonwhite resistance movements in South Africa (owing to language and other barriers), black journalists find themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, the black community has become almost as great a threat to their physical safety as government security forces who routinely harass, beat, and/or jail them. On the other, white editors frequently decline to publish stories by black correspondents for fear of government disapproval as well as adverse advertiser reaction. Finnegan makes a find job of conveying black reporters' dedicated professionalism. He also offers an engaging profile of Jon Qwelane, a talented newsman/columnist who meets deadlines and plies a dangerous trade with good humor and considerable grace. In focusing on the quotidian hazards and frustrations endured by black reporters, however, the author scants larger issues such as: the root causes of the lethal strife that pits so-called comrades against tribal groups; the apartheid bureaucracy; the racial attitudes of white liberals; the importance of the outlawed ANC; and the grass-roots reaction to economic sanctions. Uncritical and largely lacking in perspectives, then, but a nonetheless affecting bulletin. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationWilliam Finnegan is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid and A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique, both published by California. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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