"Christopher Owen Lynch's biography of Fulton Sheen is a bit like the effusive bishop himself: best when ecumenical and problematic when stretching metaphors. Lynch's premises are sound. He argues that Sheen's "Life is Worth Living" TV series helped bring Catholicism into the American mainstream. Sh
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een's homilies aired between 1952 and 1957, a crucial period in American life marked by Cold War fears and pressures for conformity. By linking the church of Rome to Cold War anti-communism, Sheen equated Catholicism with Americanism. This helped reverse an historical association between Catholicism and immigrants and repaired reputational damage by Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. Lynch is also on target when identifying Sheen as the prototype of modern televangelists. In many respects Sheen was the heir to Bruce Barton, taking full advantage of TV's still-limited commercial possibilities. Sheen played to the camera, used dramatic lighting, didactic props, and pithy sound bites to convey his messages. Like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Sheen used the prestige of his office to spin teleological but apocryphal tales. His insistence on wearing his cassock on-camera lent authority to a telegenic performance. Lynch deftly contrasts Sheen with his main competition: Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale. As a Catholic rooted in Thomist scholasticism, Sheen rejected the Calvinist predestination of Graham and the soothing nostrums of Peale. Lynch demonstrates how Sheen appealed to the medieval past to strike a balance between materialism and spirituality. The effect was a theology that was more redemptive than Graham's, but imbued with a stronger sense of sin than Peale's [...] Overall, Lynch offers a provocative but insufficiently analytical look at a neglected pioneer of the electronic pulpit. Selling Catholicism is worthwhile for what it reveals about how Sheen sold the Church of Rome as an American commodity. It is less successful when the author feels compelled to continue the sales pitch." (https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3221, July 1999)
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"This yearbook compiles information on research findings on children and youth and media violence, as seen from the perspective of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child. The thematic focus of the yearbook is on the influence of children's exposure to media violence. Section 1
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of the yearbook, "Children and Media on the UN and UNESCO Agendas," includes articles on the significance of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Section 2, "Children and Violence on the Screen: Research Articles," includes articles on U.S. television violence and children, the nature and context of violence on American television, and media violence in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Europe, and Argentina. Section 3, "Children's Media Situation: Research Articles," contains articles describing children's media access and use in various parts of the world, including Asia, China, Australia, South Africa, and Belgium. Section 4, "Media in the World," provides statistics on children and the media worldwide. Section 5, "Children in the World," details demographic indicators for children worldwide. Section 6, "Children's Participation in the Media: Some Examples," describes examples of positive child participation in the media production process. Section 7 contains international declarations and resolutions regarding children and the media. Section 8 discusses regulations and measures as a basis for building television policy. A bibliography containing approximately 300 references on children and media violence published after 1970 completes the yearbook." (https://eric.ed.gov)
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"This is the first in-depth study of how television viewers around the world respond to the ever increasing mass of information available from news programmes. It describes and interprets the type of news available and how it is understood in the context of everyday life. The study is based on news
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analysis, individual interviews and household interviews in seven countries: the United States, India, Mexico, Italy, Denmark, Israel and Belarus. Contributors include Michael Gurevitch, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Tamar Liebes, Paolo Mancini and Guillermo Orozco-Gomez." (Publisher description)
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