THE IMAGE OF THE BROADCAST JOURNALIST IN MOVIES AND TELEVISION
AEJMC Panel sponsored by
Entertainment Studies Interest Group and Visual Communications Division
Wednesday, August 2 at 10 a.m.
2006 AEJMC Convention, August 2-5 in San Francisco

Moderator-Discussant will be Joe Saltzman, professor of journalism and Director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC), a project of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Saltzman will do the introductory and summary remarks based on the latest IJPC research, and introduce the four members of the panel. He will also produce a special 10-minute video, “The Broadcast Journalist in Movies and Television” comprised of clips from movies and TV programs summing up the image of the broadcast journalist in movies and TV.

The four members of the panel and their presentations:

Richard Ness, Assistant Professor of Communication, Western Illinois University and author of “From Headline Hunter to Superman,” the definitive journalism filmology, will speak on “From the Voice in the Dark to the Face in the Crowd: The Rise and Fall of the Radio Film.” The presentation will examine the depiction of radio broadcasting in Hollywood films from the early sound era through the 1950s. Appropriately, the rise of radio broadcasting coincided with the arrival of sound film and the two media at first shared an uneasy alliance. Early films often depicted radio broadcasters as even more unscrupulous and ruthless than their newspaper counterparts. The image changed somewhat as Hollywood began to realize the crossover potential of radio relying on the medium to promote its productions and as a source of new talent.

Howard Good, Professor and Coordinator of the Journalism Program at SUNY New Paltz at New Paltz and pioneering author of books on the image of the journalist in films and novels will use film portrayals of broadcast foreign correspondents to examine journalism ethics. He will discuss TV journalists featured in “Welcome to Sarajevo, “Salvador,” and “Under Fire.”

Matthew Ehrlich, Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois and the author of the book, “Journalism in the Movies” will discuss the portrayal of Edward R. Murrow and CBS in “Good Night, and Good Luck” and talk a bout how that movie has been used to comment on what is right and wrong with television news today.

Sammye Johnson, Professor and Carlos Augustus de Lozano Chair in Journalism, Department of Communication, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas will speak on "Predatory, Pensive, Perky, Persistent: How Films Depict Women in Broadcasting." Johnson, who teaches a course in "Women Journalists in Film," examines how women are depicted in "Network," "The China Syndrome," "Broadcast News," and "Up Close and Personal." The four films cover a 20-year period from 1976 through 1996. How are the women in these films depicted in terms of power and
influence in their broadcasting outlets? How powerful are they in terms of public influence, either real or perceived? Who is ultimately the most effective and the most believable character?