"Among America's most unusual and successful weapons during the Cold War were Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. RFE-RL had its origins in a post-war America brimming with confidence and secure in its power. Unlike the Voice of America, which conveyed a distinctly American perspective on global ev
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ents, RFE-RL served as surrogate home radio services and a vital alternative to the controlled, party-dominated domestic press in Eastern Europe. Over twenty stations featured programming tailored to individual countries. They reached millions of listeners ranging from industrial workers to dissident leaders such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel. Broadcasting Freedom draws on rare archival material and offers a penetrating insider history of the radios that helped change the face of Europe. Arch Puddington reveals new information about the connections between RFE-RL and the CIA, which provided covert funding for the stations during the critical start-up years in the early 1950s. He relates in detail the efforts of Soviet and Eastern Bloc officials to thwart the stations; their tactics ranged from jamming attempts, assassinations of radio journalists, the infiltration of spies onto the radios' staffs, and the bombing of the radios' headquarters. Puddington addresses the controversies that engulfed the stations throughout the Cold War, most notably RFE broadcasts during the Hungarian Revolution that were described as inflammatory and irresponsible. He shows how RFE prevented the Communist authorities from establishing a monopoly on the dissemination of information in Poland and describes the crucial roles played by the stations as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke apart. Broadcasting Freedom is also a portrait of the Cold War in America. Puddington offers insights into the strategic thinking of the RFE-RL leadership and those in the highest circles of American government, including CIA directors, secretaries of state, and even presidents." (Publisher description)
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"This volume presents a range of information and analysis on the difficult relationship between the West and the Islamic world. It examines how the Western media has interpreted and misinterpreted Islam, the Arab world and the countries of the contemporary Middle East." (Publisher description)
"Kommunikation hat in jedem Konflikt der Geschichte eine tragende Rolle gespielt. Seit der Erfindung des Buchdruckes werden Flugblätter und Handzettel auf dem Kriegsschauplatz und im Hinterland eingesetzt. Zeitungen werden von Beginn an entweder von Streitkräften herausgegeben oder mittels Zensur
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beeinflußt. Auch der Film wird früh in den Dienst des Krieges gestellt. Bereits im Ersten Weltkrieg entfaltet er seine suggestive Kraft. Mit dem Aufkommen des Hörfunks beginnen die Gegner des Zweiten Weltkrieges Propaganda und Kriegsberichterstattung zu senden. Sobald das Fernsehen verbreitet ist, wird es auch von Konfliktgegnern genutzt. Im Vietnamkonflikt kommt der Krieg mit geringer Verzögerung in die Wohnzimmer. Im Golfkrieg induzierten Iraker und Alliierte Desinformation in die verzuglose Berichterstattung "in Echtzeit". Heute werden selbst Individualmedien wie Telefon und Fax und Datennetze wie das Internet in Konflikten eingesetzt. Der Kosovo-Konflikt fand auch im Internet statt. Zunehmend tritt Kommunikation aber auch in anderer Weise in Konflikten auf: sie ist nicht länger nur Waffe, sie wird in friedenserhaltenden Maßnahmen nun auch zur Brücke." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"From outbreaks of the flesh eating viruses Ebola and Strep A, to death camps in Bosnia and massacres in Rwanda, the media seem to careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death. First we're horrified, but each time they turn up the pitch, show us one image mor
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e hideous than the next, it gets harder and harder to feel. Meet compassion fatigue--a modern syndrome, Susan Moeller argues, that results from formulaic media coverage, sensationalized language and overly Americanized metaphors. In her impassioned new book, Compassion Fatigue, Moeller warns that the American media threatens our ability to understand the world around us. Why do the media cover the world in the way that they do? Are they simply following the marketplace demand for tabloid-style international news? Or are they creating an audience that as seen too much--or too little--to care? Through a series of case studies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--disease, famine, death and war--Moeller investigates how newspapers, newsmagazines and television have covered international crises over the last two decades, identifying the ruts into which the media have fallen and revealing why. Throughout, we hear from industry insiders who tell of the chilling effect of the mega- media mergers, the tyranny of the bottom-line hunt for profits, and the decline of the American attention span as they struggle to both tell and sell a story. But Moeller is insistent that the media need not, and should not, be run like any other business. The media have a special responsibility to the public, and when they abdicate this responsibility and the public lapses into a compassion fatigue stupor, we become a public at great danger to ourselves." (Publisher description)
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"Este libro constituye una colección de investigaciones y ensayos sobre el papel actual de las industrias de la cultura en América Latina. Los temas abordados incluyen la industria de la música, la transnacionalización de las telenovelas, el mercado editorial, internet, sistemas de información
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y la economÃa de la cultura. El mundo audiovisual y la fabricación de mercancÃas simbólicas en general son pensadas desde las tensiones internas de América Latina y sus relaciones con Estados Unidos y Europa. La elaboración de diagnósticos y de polÃticas culturales abarca los diferentes niveles de las ciudades, los estados y los nuevos acuerdos regionales. El mayor interés de este libro radica justamente en su heterogeneidad. No sólo por la multiplicidad de objetos y temas que aborda vinculados con las industrias culturales y los procesos de "integración" latinoamericanos. También, y fundamentalmente, porque constituye "un estado del debate", de perspectivas a veces sutilmente diferentes para estudiar estos procesos y para elaborar polÃticas que los direccionen." (reseña de Alejandro Grimson, Revista Punto Cero v.7 n.5 Cochabamba jul. 2002)
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"Understanding Global News invites the reader to explore contemporary journalistic practice, and questions the assumption that the media provide a mere window on the world. Challenging the often unquestioned notions of media objectivity, the author turns the classic questions: Who? What? When? and W
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hy? onto the news media. By employing a range of theoretical perspectives and a large variety of examples, the author demonstrates the way in which our perceptions of the world are constructed by the news media." (Publisher description)
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