Berlin Wall in the News

The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the shocks§of history, heralded at the time the almost§unimaginable fall of communism and end of the Cold§War. The dramatic Wall events are replayed as§landmarks in television histories today; a reminder§that they were media events -- on a grand scale. This§book tells the story of the collapse of the Eastern§bloc from the perspective of the mass media; the§journalists who reported and documented what they saw§but could hardly themselves believe. The author was§there as one of the international correspondents. His§book records interviews with leading reporters and§editors who took part; revisits the actual coverage§from six major Western media organisations, and§checks those accounts against histories being written§ten years later. It considers also the perspectives§of political leaders of the era, and especially the§gigantic crowds in the streets demanding freedom. To§understand those crowds, well tested theories of mass§social movements, and their use of media, are§consulted in the book; and in the end an argument is§made, that in this new Century, history can be§understood very accurately from the news media, just§as it happens.