THE REEL WORLD OF NEWS

According to Moyers, “Film has made it possible to see our century as no other has been seen… In archives and vaults the world over are millions of feet of film, pictures of men and women, moments and events frozen forever before the lens, a vast album of heroes and common folk, sinners and villains, the wonders, cruelties, and disasters of our time.” The program uses rarely seen vintage film to bring history before our eyes as Moyers explores and explains “those vast, subterranean connections which join one age to another.” Topics: history of newscasting, dilemmas of treating news as entertainment, press censorship, Bonus March, Great Depression, popular culture. Newsreels give us our truest picture of life in the first half of the 20th century. But how true is it? Early reporters describe what they reported—and what they didn’t.

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