Screening the Los Angeles "riots"
Subtitle: race, seeing, and resistance
By: Darnell M. Hunt.
Series: Cambridge cultural social studies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Cambridge ; New York
Number of pages: 313
Subjects: Race relations and the press -- United States; Television broadcasting of news -- California -- Los Angeles
Description: On April 29, 1992, the "worst riots of the century" (Los Angeles Times) erupted. Television newsworkers tried frantically to keep up with what was happening on the streets while, around the city, nation and globe, viewers watched intently as leaders, participants, and fires flashed across their television screens.

Screening the Los Angeles "riots" zeroes in on the first night of these events, exploring in detail the meanings one news organization found in them, as well as those made by fifteen groups of viewers in the events' aftermath. Combining ethnographic and quasi-experimental methods, Darnell M. Hunt's account reveals how race shapes both television's construction of news and viewers' understandings of it.

He engages with the longstanding debates about the power of television to shape our thoughts versus our ability to resist, and concludes with implications for progressive change.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-310) and index.

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