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Full Product Details

Author:   Bruce Cumings
Publisher:   Verso Books
Imprint:   Verso Books
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.70cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.60cm
Weight:   0.487kg
ISBN:  

9780860916826

ISBN 10:   0860916820
Pages:   326
Publication Date:   17 May 1994
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Undergraduate ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Reviews

Bruce Cummings has produced penetrating studies of US strategy and planning, along with the standard works of the Korean War. His unique combination of understanding scholarship and personal experience lends unusual significance to his reflections on the media portrayal of war. - Noam Chomsky An eloquent critique, from a politically progressive perspective, not only of TV's coverage of war but also its treatment of topical and historical events ... Cummings shows strikingly how a type of consensus evolves about America's role in wars. ...[He] 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. - Kirkus Reviews Cummings' writing is lively, clearly and engaging... this book should be of value to scholars, students, and anyone who needs to understand how to an unpopular message into the media. - Third World Resources

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. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Bruce Cumings is Professor of East Asian and International History at the University of Chicago. He is author of The Origins of the Korean War and The Unknown War (with Jon Halliday).

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