The line in the sand between the two was drawn in the 1860s and extends to this very day in the Balkans. A retired U.S. Navy captain, he served as a coordinator of in-country media activities in Vietnam. Michael Hedges, national correspondent for Scripps-Howard News Service. Mr. Harris' book is a compelling account of how the Civil War led to the emergence of the press as a power on the national scene. Readers may be distracted by some of the author's digressions . . .
Journalism is viewed as the disposable first draft of history.
What Mr. Harris' book makes clear is that taken as a whole, the work of combat correspondents created a record of the war that has formed our perceptions and fueled our imaginations ever since. Looking at the war from the viewpoint of those who produced and spread the news, even with all the journalistic gaps and miscues exposed, makes the picture of the conflict much more complete. This aspect of the war has been written about before, largely piecemeal. Now Harris has done it as fully, as clearly and as even-handedly as anyone could ask. By the end of the war, they had actually become newspapers in the way we know them today. . .