Television Journalism
- Stephen Cushion - Cardiff University, UK
Television remains one of the most viewed, valued, and trusted sources of information available. This authoritative, persuasive account evaluates television journalism's contribution to society from a political, economic, and cultural framework.
Covering issues of ownership, control, policy, and regulation, the book is a blend of theory and history that examines the UK industry from a comparative perspective. It establishes the importance of television journalism, how it converges with other formats, and the ways in which it can survive an ever-changing terrain with the advent of new technologies and new media.
Using topical references and original research, the book makes a potent contribution to television journalism studies, and is a necessary point of reference for advanced undergraduates, researchers, and academics in broadcasting, journalism, and media studies.
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
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
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
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
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
This excellent text draws upon a wide range of empirical research to provide a comprehensive exploration of the world of TV journalism.
This is a very useful textbook that has been adopted for my Level 2 and 3 undergraduate modules that deal with journalism and ethics. It also features a helpful chapter in which the journal based research of Lewis and Cushion from 2005-present is summarised - great news for the student who struggles with Athens account research. Library orders have already been placed and received.
For students interested in an up-to date insight into the making of the broadcast television journalism profession today. As the MA course I am teaching ("Journalistic Methods) is more broad, I recommend the book to those keen on TV journalism particularly.
An excellent and timely addition to an under-theorised field
