A case for irony

Stephen Cushion has done a great service by writing this sweeping, timely and provocative volume on television journalism. Cushion has devoured the relevant literature on journalism with the rabid intensity of a starving wolf left alone in a meat market. With tight focus and superb organization, Cushion has produced a remarkably coherent book that covers every important topic in the field today. Television Journalism is going to be mandatory reading for students, journalists, policymakers and scholars going forward Robert W. McChesney University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign <hr color="GBP666666" size="1px" /> An admirably ambitious synthesis of journalism scholarship and journalism practice, providing a comprehensive resource of historical analysis, contemporary trends and key data Stewart Purvis Professor of Television Journalism, City University and former CEO of ITN <hr color="GBP666666" size="1px" /> Amidst the glut of studies on new media and the news, the enduring medium of television finally gets the attention it deserves. Cushion brings television news back into perfect focus in a book that offers historical depth, geographical breadth, empirical analysis and above all, political significance. Through an interrogation of the dynamics of and relations between regulation, ownership, the working practices of journalism and the news audience, Cushion makes a clear case for why and how television news should be firmly positioned in the public interest. It should be required reading for anyone concerned with news and journalism Natalie Fenton Professor of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths <hr color="GBP666666" size="1px" /> This is a wide-ranging and informative comparison of television journalism and news in the United Kingdom and the United States. It includes valuable information from both countries on the role of TV news in television culture, the history of radio and television, the development of TV news, the changing political and economic environments for TV journalism, changing news values, profiles and studies of TV journalists, and new directions for TV journalism in the coming years. It also includes numerous tables on TV audiences, journalists' salaries, ethnic minorities in TV journalism, media journals, and top news web sites, as well as an extensive bibliography of papers, articles, and books about TV news. It is the most comprehensive and informative book on this subject that I have seen to date David H. Weaver Distinguished Professor and Roy W. Howard Research Professor, School of Journalism, Indiana University-Bloomington U.S.A <hr color="GBP666666" size="1px" /> Writing about media in the 21st century can be compared to photographing a football match while riding a carousel: both the target and the ground are moving. Steven Cushion's extensive effort to pin down the relevance of television news in the new media environment therefore is a commendable achievement. Television Journalism (part of the SAGE series Journalism Studies: Key Texts) provides readers with a detailed and valuable empirical portrait of an industry in transition... Television Journalism delivers, quite completely, on what it promises: an in-depth examination of its subject's history and political economy, the education of its practitioner, and the medium's 21st-century challenges. For readers in need of a broad picture of television news internationally, its history, regulation and tine, Television Journalism proves invaluable. This carefully crafted, empirical work provides its readers with a solid, large-scale view of television news and its role in democracy. By staying 'wide', as photographers say and working with the big picture, Cushion has managed to hit his moving target while riding the carousel that is today's media environment. Mary Angela Bock Journalism Read more...