A review of PBS’s “Citizen Hearst” (American Experience)

An anecdote about the movie “Citizen Kane” (made by Orson Welles in 1941)

In 1941, Orson Welles released a film called “Citizen Kane,” which has since become a classic. But at the time, William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress the film, by financially threatening those theatres that were showing it. Thus, the film “Citizen Kane” didn’t do that well at the time that it first came out. After watching it, I can see why William Randolph Hearst didn’t like the film. It gave a thinly-disguised (but nonetheless detectable) portrayal of a character loosely based on Hearst himself – a portrayal which was somewhat unflattering. There are significant differences between the movie life of Charles Foster Kane, and the real life of Hearst himself. Other parts of the movie are eerily similar to the real thing. But to go into either the similarities or the differences between the two (let alone both of these things) would be beyond the scope of this blog post. Here, I will instead review PBS’s four-hour biography of the real William Randolph Hearst. It is simply entitled “Citizen Hearst,” an obvious reference to the famous Orson Welles film.

A review of PBS’s “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People”

The “Pulitzer Prize” was named after the great newspaper editor Joseph Pulitzer …

In 1917, six years after the death of Joseph Pulitzer, the “Pulitzer Prize” was established. It came from provisions in his will, as the result of his prior endowments to Columbia University. Many have heard of the “Pulitzer Prize,” but few have heard of Pulitzer himself. Yet he helped to make our world into a media-saturated and media-obsessed place, and the world isn’t necessarily the worse for this overabundance of information.

A review of PBS’s “War of the Worlds” (American Experience)

Note: This post contains some science-fiction images, which are used to dramatize the story. Thus, not all of the pictures in this particular blog post are strictly historical; nor are they meant to be taken as such.

This broadcast made people think that a Martian invasion was really happening …

In 1938, there was a radio broadcast about a Martian invasion, based upon the 1898 science-fiction novel by H. G. Wells. The novel “War of the Worlds” was a milestone in the history of science fiction, but the broadcast has since become famous for another reason. That is, this broadcast made people think that this “Martian invasion” was really happening. This is why PBS decided to cover it in this program. As worthy as the history of science fiction might be, it would seldom receive the documentary treatment of PBS. But the 1938 panic was a case study in mass psychology, which showed how suggestible people are – some would say “gullible.” People dispute the extent of the panic, but there were certainly people who believed that it was really happening. This film uses audio from the broadcast, and photographs and real footage from the time. I suspect that it would be nearly impossible to get a CD or a DVD of the full radio program as it was first broadcast – although I have not looked for such discs myself, so I don’t know this for certain. Suffice it to say, though, that this documentary occupies a small niche, and is worth having in and of itself.

A review of Ken Burns’ “Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio” (PBS)

Sometimes these three men were friends … At other times, they were cutthroat business rivals

The filmmaker Ken Burns became famous when “The Civil War” came out in 1990. At the time I write this, “The Civil War” is still the most popular program ever shown on PBS. But few today know about another program that he later made, which came out in 1992. The film that I refer to is, of course, the film “Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio.” Although the subject is a bit obscure, it’s actually much more interesting than one might assume from this fact. It’s a biography of three different men (all very interesting), who helped to create the industry of radio. They were pioneers in the invention of a new information and entertainment medium. Some of them were even friends and colleagues with each other in earlier years, but some of them were cutthroat business rivals and bitter enemies later on. This film is thus a bit like doing twin biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, as Ken Burns does in “The Civil War.” But with one exception, no one died in this market competition between these three businessmen; although that doesn’t make it any less dramatic. (The person who did die, incidentally, was one of these three men – I shall not say which one – when he jumped out of a New York City window to fall 13 stories to his death. This suicide was brought on by his being beaten at the game of business, and thus driven to some amount of poverty and ruin.)

The First Amendment: Protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in a statement often misattributed to Voltaire (although the author rightly viewed this as an accurate paraphrase of Voltaire's sentiments)

The first thing many people think of about the Constitution

The Constitution is filled with passages that are of the utmost importance to this country, from separation of powers in the original Constitution to the Bill of Rights in the amendments. But if I were asked which passage may be the most important to the majority of Americans, my vote might well go to this part of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." (Source: First Amendment) This is the Constitution's famous First Amendment, and it is indeed the first of the ten amendments that make up our modern "Bill of Rights." It is also the first thing that most people think of when they talk about what's important to them in the Constitution, since the rights that we have are easier to visualize than abstract concepts of separation of powers and checks & balances. (Although these things are vitally important, too, as I detail in another post that I wrote elsewhere.)

United States Bill of Rights

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the right to "petition the government"

The bedrock of American political life today may be the parts about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These are both forms of a larger concept called "freedom of expression" - one in the spoken form, and the other in the written form. (Although I'm sure that sign language and other gestures would also be considered to be "freedom of speech" under this constitutional definition, and free expression on the Internet has long been held to be included under this amendment as well.) The right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances" is another specific form of this freedom of expression, which is usually written down on paper and other hardcopy material. But it is also sometimes found in the Internet form that I have mentioned as well; and it is well that this freedom of expression (in all of these forms) is protected by the First Amendment. It has been codified as a general principle in all political communication throughout this country - and other communication, for that matter.

Martin Luther King giving his "I Have A Dream" speech, 1963

My experience with communications

"The use of language begins with imitation. The infant imitates the sounds made by its parents; the child imitates first the spoken language, then the stuff of books. The imitative life continues long after the writer is secure in the language, for it is almost impossible to avoid imitating what one admires. Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains instead to admire what is good. Then when you write in a way that comes naturally, you will echo the halloos that bear repeating."

– E. B. White, in Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style"

During my high school years, I had no idea what the communications major was. When I heard people talk about it, I thought that meant the study of communications technology; and I had the mental image of a radio and learning Morse code. Those who have taken a communications class are probably laughing right now, because they know it's a far cry from what the communications major is. Communications, in short, is about the art of communicating with other people. It's about the message rather than the medium, and about the humanities more than the sciences.

A classic radio, something like the mental image I had for the communications major