So, building now towards the Spring 2007, Haupseminar Course at the JFK, Berlin...introducing some KB principles early on as they apply to the beginnings of US media (radio, tv and film):

George Clooney’s “Good Night and Good Luck” (2005) takes its significant and timely place in a Hollywood genre lineage that, since the 1970s, has assumed to represent the development of U.S. television.

The film’s critical and commercial success - as topped by 2006 Oscar recognitions - confirm how relevant these issues remain for present-day audiences.

This course places “Good Night and Good Luck” in a deep historical context by focusing critically on former Hollywood films that, from the 1970s to the 1990s, also assumed to represent the working practices of U.S. broadcast news, cable news media and Reality TV.

The spine of the course will therefore explore how ten corporate intertextualities - from Network (20th Century Fox, 1976) to The Insider (Touchstone, 1999) - reflected public disquiet about media ownership, gender representation, corporate mergers, free speech, new technologies, war coverage, and even the influential powers of market journalism itself. The rhetorics of such texts are considerd in a uniquely Burkian perspective.

In addition, our study will be enriched by contextual histories, which, since the 1920s, consider relevant legal, institutional and political interventions in the early development of the U.S. public media. This will lead to a Case Study analysis of cable news coverage post 9/11.

The course is an update of a book publication by the Course Leader which itself became the focus of intense public and on-air debate during 2005 General Elections in Eastern Europe.