An episodic history of the revolutionary effect of television news reporting on politics, current events and the print media in the United States over the past four decades.

The authors also describe and reflect on the impact of television news on presidential and congressional politics through the Reagan years and into the Bush administration and address the changes in newspapers and magazines caused by the rise of television journalism. In 1989 91, three gripping events - the students' protest and its suppression at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist empire in Eastern Europe, and the war in the Persian Gulf - riveted the American public. Television news was central to each event, and this book explains why.