Reviews for Writing and Producing Television News: From Newsroom to Air

The average rating for Writing and Producing Television News: From Newsroom to Air based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-06 00:00:00 Alexander Daniel Much like the first volume this outlines in emotional detail the continued consequences of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. There are significant changes. Corruption at all levels is rampant. U.S. troops are committing atrocities. Many detest the country and the Vietnamese people. Troops are rebelling and not following orders. Racial tensions between white and black troops are escalating. There are incidents of fragging, as when a commanding officer becomes overly zealous on patrol to seek out enemy contact. Troops did not want to engage the enemy - they wanted to go home in one piece. Many troops were using drugs from marijuana to heroin. A long war inevitably corrupts and debases. It was becoming, in many ways, as per the famous quote "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it". There is a startling portrayal of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan - he is the man in the most infamous war photo of all time. An article on former President Lyndon Johnson is interesting solely because it demonstrates a deluded leader who feels he was always right and never wrong. There are also depictions of the North Vietnamese. Page 253 - 54 (my book) Tien taken prisoner by the South Vietnamese "We walked [on the Ho Chi Minh trail] eleven hours a day and the longer we walked the more bored and morose we became," Tien said. "There were many things I missed. First, I wanted a real cigarette. Then, I wanted to see my mother, to be close to her. And then, what I really wanted badly was a whole day of rest."... In his village there were no men who had come back. There were no letters from any of them. Before 1968, men going south had been granted 15-day leaves, but these were cancelled. No family knew, or wondered allowed, who had been wounded or killed. Page 371-72 (of bombing in North Vietnam) The bombs had hit an area about a thousand yards long and five hundred yards wide in the middle of town. According to the local authorities eighteen blast bombs had been dropped, along with four anti-personnel bombs; each of the latter contains 192,500 steel pellets, which are hurled through the air when the bomb explodes. Many of the stories are about troops on the ground - relatively few are from the Washington perspective. There was a tremendous disconnect between grunts (GIs, marines) in the villages, foothills, and rice paddies - to Saigon officials - and then to the U.S. The longest article is "Dispatches" by Michael Herr. It captures the essence and horrors of Vietnam; although I wonder how the drugs the author took permeated his viewpoint. He definitely follows the maxim of Nietzsche "And if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." These two volumes (1959 - 1969 and 1969 - 1975) are indispensible for an understanding of the Vietnam War - and all wars.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-23 00:00:00 Cwengile Gagela This book is an excellent compendium of Vietnam journalism. The editors have been careful to select salient pieces mostly from the American perspective. Civilian life, combat ritual, enemy POWs, war protestors are all covered by various writers (Tom Wolfe, David Halberstam, Hunter Thomspon, etc.) I enjoyed the Kent State piece and the interview with the infamous "bullet-in-the-brain" police director from South Vietnam.