Extra: The Inventions of Journalism

This book by Edward Jay Epstein, the author of News From Nowhere, explores the myths, fables, and other inventions of American Journalism. The project began forty-five years ago when William Shawn, the legendary editor of the New Yorker, asked him to investigate media reports that the US government had executed 28 members of the Black Panther party. After Epstein had demonstrated that the story was a myth of the press– and the list of the 28 deaths was an invention of a lawyer for the Black Panther party the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times issued editorial apologies for their stories perpetuating the myth. In EXTRA, read about the inventions of journalism, including Deep Throat, Bin Laden’s fortress at Tora Bora, and the heroin epidemic of the 1960s. In EXTRA, read about for the tabloids subsumed the mainstream press. In EXTRA, read about how television became news from nowhere.