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Hudson, Miles, and John Stanier. War and the Media: A Random Searchlight Washington Square: New York University Press, 1998.338 pp. $35.
Nelson, Michael. War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997. 277 pp. $29.95.
War has the effect of bringing into sharp perspective the ideals and foibles of the mass media in a democracy. Few people would say that war is good, yet wars have launched correspondents (William Russell and David Halberstam, for example) as well as entire news organizations (CNN) into prominence. By bringing war into the light of public scrutiny, the mass media have changed the way wars are fought and, arguably, who wins. Such is the import of two recent books on the stormy history of war and the news media.
War and the Media by Britons Miles Hudson and John Stanier surveys news coverage of wars fought by Great Britain and the United States from the Crimea (1854-56) to the Balkans (1991-96). The authors bring to bear their substantial backgrounds in the military (Stanier is ex-Chief of the British General Staff) and policy formation (Hudson has held government and think tank posts), and their account focuses on the effects of news coverage and media relations on...