MAS203 - Review Essay
The book this essay is going to review is A History Of News, which is written by Mitchell Stephens. The first two paragraphs will be the brief summary of the book. Later on, two issues raised from the book are going to be examined in the rest of the essay. The first one is the shallowness of television newscasts comparing to newspapers. And the second one is the importance of national network in regard to the unity of a nation. Deficiencies of the book will be suggested next and then following with a conclusion.
A History Of News (Stephens 2007) is a book about the history of news reporting and journalism from the spoken news within ancient tribes to the electronic news in this contemporary society. The author presents his work through a chronological order. The first stage of the order is the spoken news.
a map of the Arab World
English: Photograph of ABC News Good Morning Ameri...
Stephen Explains or Avoids Camera?Messengers, criers and minstrels were the main news specialists for this news system. Later on, news was exchanged in coffeehouses. The second stage is the written news. When comparing the written news to the spoken news, the former impressed people by recording the words down, so it seemed more reliable than spoken news as the mistakes that took place when transmitting news through speaking were omitted. Also, it allowed readers to have time to rethink about the news. The third stage is the printed news. Newsbooks, ballads, verses were the common forms of printed news at first. The content of that news was sensational in order to have a higher circulation. Therefore, issues related to politics and military were seldom found in those news reports. By the contrast, gossips, entertainments, crimes and supernatural events were the main concerns of them.
For the later part of the book, the focuses...