Berlin Wall: Twenty Years On
- March 1st, 2009
- Posted by EUEditor
The drama of the breaking down of the Berlin Wall is so often replayed on television screens it might seem a short time ago; but already, it will be 20 years on, in November.
A new book (released 3.2.09) by EUAustralia Editor Lee Duffield goes back over the days of transformation in Europe, seen from the perspective of media correspondents who were there.
Jacket notes for “Berlin Wall in the News: Mass Media and the Fall of the Eastern Bloc in Europeâ€:
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.
The author, Lee Duffield, was the Brussels-based European Correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1989, who was present at the announcement of the opening of the wall, and the says of celebration that would follow.
(Picture: The author at demolition of the Wall, Eberswalderstrasse, East Berlin, November 1989).
Details of the text:
L. Duffield (2009), Berlin Wall in the News: Mass Media and the Fall of the Eastern Bloc in Europe; Saarbruken, Germany, VDM publishers.
The book is available through Amazon.
Pictures:
Celebrations November 1989, Europa.eu
Wall graffiti, travelblog.org
Berlin Wall installations, mars.wnec.eduÂ