Media Studies

Probing behind the scenes at the top-rated New York City news program, this documentary examines the processes and values of contemporary broadcast journalism. Through interviews with station staff and dissections of story coverage, a candid portrait emerges of America's primary news source, the `Six O'Clock News' program.

Examines local TV `spot' news coverage--the term stations give to filmed coverage of fires, car accidents, shootings and other local events involving violence or death--which are frequently used as the lead story on news programs.

Examines American media coverage of the war in El Salvador and how journalists cover a war in which the U.S. is deeply involved.

This unusual video examines the ways in which corporate representations have shaped Americans' ideas about Third World countries.

Reveals a hidden dimension to the media coverage of the Gulf War, showing how a group of wealthy Kuwaiti citizens hired the American PR firm Hill and Knowlton to develop a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote U.S. military intervention in the Gulf on behalf of Kuwait.

A behind-the-scenes look at media coverage of the 1992 Republican National Convention where, for one hectic week, 15,000 members of the working press crowded into Houston's Astrodome complex.

This video examines award-winning broadcast journalist Amy Goodman, of New York's WBAI-FM radio, at work covering the February 1994 emergence of Zapatista rebels in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Public interest in the secrets and scandals of TV and movie stars fuels the billion dollar a year business of tabloid journalism, one with a weekly readership of over 20,000,000 for 'supermarket tabs' such as The National Enquirer, The Star, and The Globe. This documentary goes behind the scenes to chronicle the daily activities of the editors, writers, researchers and photographers at The Globe and other leading 'tabs,' in the process revealing their working methods and journalistic philosophy.

This video is based on the travel films of Caroline Wagner, a New York amateur filmmaker, whose peripatetic travels took her on over a hundred voyages around the world, her hand-cranked 16mm movie camera always in hand, from 1939 until the mid- Sixties.

This compilation video-using material shot in the early Seventies on _" open-reel, black and white, battery-operated portapaks-provides a provocative portrait of the early years of public access television, when community activists throughout the nation began producing local television programs, placing local needs above ratings and commercial interests.

This historical survey of public access television uses rare video clips from across the U.S., including rediscovered footage from the _" portapak era, and interviews with community television pioneers.

Chronicles the controversial history of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which almost from its inception was characterized by management's political censorship of the Documentary Department and the TV News Department's complicity with the National Party and government security forces.