Chapter 9: Panorama-The Destination of Choice
Another highly enjoyable chapter about broadcasting; in this case, about Bell's stint with "Panorama", a "news-magazine" type show. More specifically, this chapter describes how Bell--a long-time newsman from the other side of the fence--came to be assigned to a piece on Bosnia for Panorama, as well as the context behind that move.Good reading, but again only of relevance to this blog to the extent that it gets us to:
Chapter 10: Forcing the Peace
A synopsis of the content of that Panorama piece, along with the story of "the making of." I have not seen the piece itself yet, but apparently it was very influential and watched back in Britain, and it seems that Bell used the piece to call for some sort of action by the international community.The chapter ends with Bell expounding on the notion that journalists have the obligation to do more than simply engage in "hand-wringing" over man-made tragedies such as Bosnia. Once again, Bell's fundamental decency and humanity comes through in this chapter.
2 comments:
Justwatch-l published a brief excerpt from Taylor Branch's new book "The Clinton Tapes" in which the former President talks about Bosnia and the reluctance (to put it very mild terms) of France (in particular) and Britain (less vehmently) to get rid of the international embargo against Bosnia. According to Clinton, while in public they justified their opposition to the lifting the embargo on humanitarian grounds (not wanting to promote further bloodshed, possible distruption of humanitarian aid, etc.) in private they were much more blunt:they simply did not want a "Muslim" country in Europe-in other words the embargo, with its lopsided advantage to Serbia and Croatia was achieving its goal.
Okay, my description of the book is longer than the excerpt itself, so here it is: http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0910&L=JUSTWATCH-L&T=0&O=D&P=175256
OT: I have not read the book myself, but Branch is a brilliant writer, his books on the civil rights movement in the 1960s won him the Pulitzer (and justifiably so).
I know you love reading books, here is one great book for you:
Book title: To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing, Author: Sarah E. Wagner
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