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REPORTING THE WARS by Joseph J. Mathews

REPORTING THE WARS

By

ISBN: 0816658234
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota Press

War reporting through the ages, from Xenophon to Richard Harding Davis, from Ernie Pyle to the present day of teletype and radio. Its pages are filled with the names of famous as well as obscure war reporters and chroniclers: Xenophon and Julius Caesar were in a way war correspondents; Napoleon knew the trick of coloring the news to suit his own ends. The first modern war correspondent, as we know the term, was John Bell, a London journalist sent to the Netherlands in 1794 to cover war news for the London Oracle. He endured many of the trials besetting present day reporters; his reports hold a distinctly modern flavor. Possibly the greatest- probably the most influential of all war reporters was William Howard Russell, who covered the Crimean and the American Civil Wars for the London Times, and whose first-hand accounts of the Charge of the Light Brigade and the conditions in Crimean hospitals left their mark on history. Long and written in a somewhat ponderous style, the book is if possible too well documented for the casual reader, though for reference this in no way detracts from its value. A book for students of journalism, for correspondents and reporters in their experimental years. A book for the layman to take in small doses.