Reporting America at War: An Oral History - Hardcover

Tobin, James; Ferrari, Michelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401300723 ISBN 13: 9781401300722

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2003

Synopsis

Whether dodging sniper fire, accompanying strategic bombing raids over enemy territory, challenging the Pentagon's version of events, or crossing the frontlines to interview figures at the heart of the conflict, war correspondents have served as the eyes and ears of the nation, conveying the facts, the brutality and the drama of warfare, and shaping public opinion in the process. Now for the first time, in Reporting America at War, the nation's most respected reporters share their stories to create a fascinating oral history.

About this title

About the Author

Michelle Ferrari, writer of the PBS series Reporting America at War, has been creating innovative and critically acclaimed documentary narratives for more than a decade. She was the writer of the PBS special Out of the Past and the American Experience documentary Seabiscuit, which earned her a 2003 Primetime Emmy nomination. Her work also has been seen on HBO and Cinemax, and has received honors from the Writers Guild of America, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, and film festivals nationwide. She lives in New York City.

James Tobin won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II. His most recent book is To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with Edward R. Murrow's live reports during the London blitz and ending with an epilogue on the second war in Iraq, this oral history contains transcripts of interviews with 11 top correspondents. Murrow is one of three deceased reporters included (the others are Martha Gellhorn and Homer Bigart), along with Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, Frank Gibney, Malcolm Browne, David Halberstam, Morley Safer, Ward Just, Gloria Emerson, Chris Hedges and Christiane Amanpour. Compared with correspondents who covered WWII and Korea, today's journalists tend to have more campaign ribbons. The New York Times's Hedges, for example, has covered Central America, the Middle East and the Balkans; Amanpour has reported for CNN from the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan. The correspondents who were in Vietnam-including Homer Bigart and Gloria Emerson-opine on the official disinformation campaign and the corruption of the Saigon regime, while Amanpour, who covered a different kind of war in Somalia, speaks of the impact of the repeated showing of footage of an American soldier's body being dragged through Mogadishu, which she says caused the Clinton administration to curtail the U.S.'s mission there. Tobin's introductions and transitional and informational interpolations within the transcripts hold this informative volume together. Just sums up the book's importance: "As long as there are wars, it is very important to know, in the details, how they are being fought [and] to know the manner in which people are dying.... If someone isn't there to report it, it's just a tree crashing in the forest with nobody to hear it." Photos.-- to know the manner in which people are dying.... If someone isn't there to report it, it's just a tree crashing in the forest with nobody to hear it." Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1401300723
• ISBN 13: 9781401300722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256