Berlin Wall in the News

The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the shocksof history, heralded at the time the almostunimaginable fall of communism and end of the ColdWar. The dramatic "Wall" events are replayed aslandmarks in television histories today; a reminderthat they were media events -- on a grand scale. Thisbook [...]
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The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the shocksof history, heralded at the time the almostunimaginable fall of communism and end of the ColdWar. The dramatic "Wall" events are replayed aslandmarks in television histories today; a reminderthat they were media events -- on a grand scale. Thisbook tells the story of the collapse of the Easternbloc from the perspective of the mass media; thejournalists who reported and documented what they sawbut could hardly themselves believe. The author wasthere as one of the international correspondents. Hisbook records interviews with leading reporters andeditors who took part; revisits the actual coveragefrom six major Western media organisations, andchecks those accounts against histories being writtenten years later. It considers also the perspectivesof political leaders of the era, and especially thegigantic crowds in the streets demanding freedom. Tounderstand those crowds, well tested theories of masssocial movements, and their use of media, areconsulted in the book; and in the end an argument ismade, that in this new Century, history can beunderstood very accurately from the news media, justas it happens.