21 May 2011
Writing about some people in the American journalism history
The first person we would like to discuss is well known around the world as Deep Throat. Deep Throat is an anonymous person, whose activities have been cloaked in mystery for a long time. The person, who worked under this pseudonym, secretly passed information about the government of the United States to the journalists. It is believed that in 1970s Deep Throat leaked discrediting information about governmental actions to the press.
It is suggested that the culmination of Deep Throat’s activity was so called the Watergate scandal. The scandal broke out in 1972 and involved the name of President Nixon. The scandal led not only to resignation of the president, but to imprisonment of some representatives of the White House. For more than 20 years true name of Deep Throat was classified. In the article of the magazine Vanity Fair, which was published in 2005, real name of Deep Throat was revealed. In accordance with some sources, it is considered to be Mark Felt.
Father Coughlin is another outstanding personality, who played a key role in development of American journalism. Father Charles Coughlin was born in Canada and began his career path as a parish priest. However, such career could not satisfy ambitions of Father Coughlin and in a short period of time his life radically changed. The reason why we discuss Father Coughlin in relation with journalism is his radio career. At present time he is well known around the world as an incredible phenomenon in the history of radio. Specialists believe that Father Coughlin’s audience was one of the largest not only in the United States of America, but around the whole world as well.
It is remarkable that the focus of interest of Father Coughlin had radically changed during his career. Thus, he began his radio broadcasting with religious themes. However, this was not enough for the young priest and with the flow of time he began to focus his attention on politics. There is an opinion that in 1936 Father Coughlin was one of the key figures in the presidential campaign.
Without any doubts, one of the most prominent personalities related to American journalism is Ted Turner. The Media Mogul of the United States is considered to be a personality, who changed our understanding of television. It is considered that during 1970s- 1990s Ted Turner introduced innovations, which left an incredible mark on development of cable television.
The rise of his career is associated with a successful merge of two companies, Turner Communications and Rice Broadcasting. Such deal had a tremendous success, which resulted in promotion of WTCG. This cable channel became one of the most popular stations.
Among other Ted Turner’s innovations, it is crucial to name CNN. With the flow of time it grew and expanded into a variety of broadcasting sources. Ted Turner legacy is well known all over the world. It includes such outstanding media sources as CNN International, CNN Radio, CNN Headline News. Apart from this, we should also mention Turner Network Television, The Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
While speaking about American journalism and its prominent representatives, it is vital to mention one more name. Al Primo is a legendary person in the history of American Journalism. One of his main merits is revolution in news broadcasting. It is considered that after introducing so called eyewitness news, Al Primo changed our perception of TV broadcasting. Although today his idea seems to be rather simple and evident, no one had thought of it before Al Primo. The significance of this revolution was so great that in the Daily News Al Primo was described as a person who totally changed the process of news broadcasting.
