Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Mass Communication and Culture: Myth and Narrative in Television and the Press seeks to decode some of the messages transmitted by our mass media in terms of the cultural tradition in which they are enmeshed.

Contributors from the fields of both communication and cultural studies, consider subjects as diverse as the narrative elements of news, the structural links between Dallas and the book of Genesis, and Rupert Murdoch as the demon of professional journalism.

The volume as a whole is a fascinating exposition of the thesis that television and the press are not only a part of popular culture but a reflection of it.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• Taking Culture Seriously
• Part 1 Overviews
• Television, Myth and Culture
• Television as an Aesthetic Medium
• Myth, Chronicle and Story
• Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News
• Part 2 Television
• One Night of Prime Time
• An Analysis of Television's Multiple Voices
• Dallas and Genesis
• Primordiality and Seriality in Popular Culture
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Transformation of Situation Comedy
• Television Stardom
• A Ritual of Social Typification and Individualization
• Television, Myth and Ritual
• The Role of Substantive Meaning and Spatiality
• Part 3 The Press
• The Watergate Audience
• Parsing the Powers of the Press
• On Journalistic Authority
• The Janet Cooke Scandal
• What is a Reporter? The Private Face of Public Journalism
• Rupert Murdoch and the Demonology of Professional Journalism

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

A collection of essays by some of the most influential scholars in the field of television and newspaper analysis, including Newcomb, Silverstone, Thorburn, and Schudson, and some new voices. Extensive bibliographies end each chapter. The volume offers more questions than answers, particularly in the overview section--questions that call for a reevaluation of widely accepted methodologies. Carey's introduction is a trenchant critique of the functionalism that simply displaces questions of culture by renaming them. Thorburn and Newcomb point out the limitations of a semiotic or deconstructionist approach when faced with subtle shifts in tone, characterization, or narrative strategy, and question the linear Proppian model. Thorburn decries "an inversion of politics and culture that . . . grips our assessment of the popular arts." Bird and Dardenne look at how television news stories do not "tell it like it is" but rather "tell it like it means." Liebes and Katz provide a provocative cross-cultural analysis of Dallas, emphasizing, with Reeves and Silverstone, the importance of the reader's interaction with text. The last part of the collection raises other issues about ethics and mythologies surrounding news gathering. Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above. M. J. Miller Brock University