As a young reporter John MacKay took the first calls on the Lockerbie Bombing. As a news anchor he conducted the final TV interviews of the Yes and No campaigns in Scotland's Referendum. His journey in journalism has taken him to the key events through the most dramatic decades of Scotland's peacetime history. Using contemporary scripts, transcripts of significant interviews, diaries and recollections, he charts Scotland's transformation as a society and as a nation.
Secret Notes From Iran is the first-person account of a journalist who travelled through Iran, disguised as a casual tourist, during the stormy US-Iran stand-off in the summer of 2017. With Iran now facing the possibility of a full-scale war with the US, the book features critical geopolitical analysis of Iran’s position in the current world order. The reader is taken across the length and breadth of the country, and the iconic Iranian settings serve as venues of illuminating conversations with Iranian locals about their predicament. The narrative is accompanied by exclusive photographs taken in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Persepolis, Bandar Abbas and several other locations. The book comprises revealing first-hand observations, analyses of oil politics, a heady dose of war talk, a close look at sensitive social issues, and powerful interviews of world-renowned geopolitical writer and Iran expert, Vijay Prashad, and celebrated anti-hijab Iranian activist and writer, Masih Alinejad. This book reflects the deeply conflicted times we live in, filled with equal measures of uplifting promise and dangerous portent. The book also features a powerful interview with Noam Chomsky, the most prominent political scientist of our times, on the US-Iran standoff.
This inspiring memoir of life on the frontlines of history is a “riveting blend of investigative reporting, color commentary, and personal reminiscence” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A 60 Minutes correspondent and former anchor of the CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley writes as a witness to events that changed our world. In moving, detailed prose, he stands with firefighters at the collapsing World Trade Center on 9/11, advances with American troops in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and reveals private moments with presidents (and would-be presidents) he’s known for decades. Pelley also offers a resounding defense of free speech and a free press as the rights that guarantee all others. Above all, Truth Worth Telling offers a collection of inspiring tales that reminds us of the importance of sticking to our values in uncertain times. For readers who believe that values matter, and that truth is worth telling, Pelley writes, “I have written this book for you.”
DIVLong before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries. It evaluates the unexpected variety of ways in which information was transmitted in the premodern world as well as the impact of expanding news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public. Andrew Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and journalists trustworthy; and people’s changed sense of themselves as they experienced newly opened windows on the world. By the close of the eighteenth century, Pettegree concludes, transmission of news had become so efficient and widespread that European citizens—now aware of wars, revolutions, crime, disasters, scandals, and other events—were poised to emerge as actors in the great events unfolding around them./div
Practical Journalism: How to Write News introduces the beginner to the skills needed to become a journalist in the digital age. The book draws on interviews with dozens of working journalists. They share their thoughts on the profession and we watch them work - selecting stories, carrying out interviews and writing scripts. There are chapters on interviewing, research techniques and news writing. Further chapters cover working in broadcasting and online. Media law and ethics are also included. Most journalists believe they work ethically although few have set rules and others admit to being pressured to behave underhandedly. This book looks at how journalists can work more ethically and provides a guide for beginners. The book is easy to read. Each chapter concludes with activities and a list of further reading. A glossary of terms is included at the end of the book.
A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.
“On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist beautifully outlines . . . what it means to seek the truth. It gave me a new faith in the power of reporting.” —Oprah Winfrey The recipient of multiple Peabody and Murrow awards, Clarissa Ward is a world-renowned conflict reporter. In this strange age of crisis where there really is no front line, she has moved from one hot zone to the next. With multiple assignments in Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, Ward, who speaks seven languages, has been based in Baghdad, Beirut, Beijing, and Moscow. She has seen and documented the violent remaking of the world at close range. With her deep empathy, Ward finds a way to tell the hardest stories. On All Fronts is the riveting account of Ward’s singular career and of journalism in this age of extremism. Following a privileged but lonely childhood, Ward found her calling as an international war correspondent in the aftermath of 9/11. From her early days in the field, she was embedding with marines at the height of the Iraq War and reporting from the center of Israel’s war with Hezbollah. Soon she was soon on assignment all over the globe. From her multiple stints entrenched with Syrian rebels to her deep investigations into the Western extremists who are drawn to ISIS, Ward covered Bashar al-Assad’s reign of terror without fear and with courage and compassion. In 2018, Ward rose to new heights at CNN and became a mother. Suddenly, she was doing this hardest of jobs with a whole new perspective. On All Fronts is the unforgettable story of one extraordinary journalist—and of a changing world.
"IMMEDIATELY ENGROSSING . . . [A] SPLENDID MEMOIR." --The Wall Street Journal "Run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and treat yourself to the most heartwarming, nostalgia-producing book you will have read in many a year." --Ann Landers "Entertaining . . . The story of a modest man who succeeded extravagantly by remaining mostly himself. . . . His memoir is a short course on the flow of events in the second half of this century--events the world knows more about because of Walter Cronkite's work." --The New York Times Book Review A MAIN SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF THE MONTH CLUB
In moving verse, Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis gives new voice to seventeen heroes of civil rights. Exquisitely illustrated by five extraordinary artists, this commanding collection of poems invites the reader to hear in each verse the thunder that lies in every voice, no matter how small. Featuring civil rights luminaries Coretta Scott King, Harvey Milk, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Sylvia Mendez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mamie Carthan Till, Helen Zia, Josh Gibson, Dennis James Banks, Mitsuye Endo, Ellison Onizuka, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Yunus, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
