Word: halberstam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...analyzing the power of these institutions and the media in general--supposedly Halberstam's objective here--he does nothing new. All his major themes have been introduced and explored, usually with much more immediacy, by other writers. Take, for instance, the impact of television in reshaping American politics. Theodore H. White '38 in The Making of the President 1960 broke the story of the Kennedys' deliberate use of television and polls to pole-vault the regular party structure as well as time and space restrictions on national candidates. Joe McGinnis's The Selling of the President 1968, a case study...
...Halberstam's basic problem in writing about media power comes down to his extravagant hyperbole of language, which, time and again, overwhelms his command of narrative and the telling (and telling, and telling) anecdote. In the relatively unploughed terrain of Los Angeles Times history (the most interesting parts of the book), Halberstam details how the unscrupulous Harry Chandler in the 1880s hooked and crooked his way to control over subscription lists for L.A.'s three morning dailies. Then, by combining forces with one of them, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis's Times, Chandler forced the Times's main competitor...
...HALBERSTAM has the makings of a great historical novel here. But after all those years of having his rhetorical flourishes cut by The New York Times's good, gray copy desk, he can't resist opening the floodgates. He writes of Harry Chandler as though he were the archetypical tycoon, when, actually, even more grotesque immorality founded thousands of American fortunes in these same years--Horatio Alger and Benjamin Franklin notwithstanding. Halberstam goes on (and on) to maintain that the Chandlers "in effect invented" Southern California, just like their political hired-gun/reporter Kyle Palmer invented Richard Nixon...
...Halberstam's media-determinism (he had to justify that $300,000 advance somehow) leads him into some egregious mistakes in reporting and analysis. It's crucial to Halberstam's argument, for instance, that when the Los Angeles Times finally gave Nixon "fair" coverage in the 1962 California governor's race, asked tough questions, allowed his opponent equal space. Nixon would break down and reveal his paranoia. So Halberstam completely distorts the famous "you won't have Nixon to kick around any more" press conference after Nixon lost that race. Quoting only one Nixon sentence, Halberstam claims that Nixon completely lost...
There are other errors in this sprawling book--errors easily forgiven but for Halberstam's reputation as a scrupulously accurate reporter, errors difficult to track down because Halberstam rarely attributes his stories (he simply includes a four-page list of people he interviewed, leaving it to the reader to mix and match). For instance, Halberstam completely rewriters the late Louisiana governor Earl Long's great line about Time/Life's Henry Luce ("Mr. Luce is like a man that owns a shoestore and buys all the shoes to fit himself. Then he expects other people to buy them."), adds...