In 1962, a group of students set out on a mission to free their friends and family from communist East Berlin. NBC set out to show America the heroism of the students and the harsh reality of Berlin. The documentary NBC produced drew immediate backlash from the U.S., East and West Berlin, and other news outlets. Fifty-eight years later, IU professor Mike Conway tells the story in his new book, “Contested Ground.”
News alert! My book “Contested Ground” has won the annual Library of American Broadcasting Foundation book award. Looking forward to talking about the book at the @BEAWebTweets conference in Las Vegas in April. @Bcast_Md beaweb.org/wp/?p=9240
— Mike Conway (@mtconway) February 18, 2020
Conway’s book tells the story of Reuven Frank, the producer of the 1962 NBC documentary, “The Tunnel.” Frank faced the pressure of hostile Germany, his own government, and other powerful news networks. Each group tried to stop “The Tunnel” from being broadcast.
“When the word got out that they had filmed this, it became a huge controversy on both sides of the Iron Curtain. So the US Government, the West Berlin, West German Government, the East German Government, the Soviet Union, everybody was against this – they did not want NBC to do this documentary,” Conway said.
https://youtu.be/T1lVHbYOCUA
Frank fought hard to show the fight of the students. He believed that Americans needed to see the story with their own eyes to truly experience the story. The documentary was produced at a time where broadcast news was gaining immense popularity, overtaking traditional print media. Frank was at the forefront of the TV news movement. He was the creator of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, a groundbreaking news program that set the foundation of modern TV news.
The power of seeing an event as it occurs was a storytelling method that inspired Frank. He described his separation between journalists in print media and broadcast in an interview with Conway in 2003.
“Television news, in at least one of its aspects, is this constant battle between the word people and the picture people,” Frank said.
https://youtu.be/phE13jJ1CPg
Mike Conway is what Frank would call a “picture person.” Conway was involved in every aspect of broadcast news for 20 years, as a reporter, producer, and director for news stations across the country. The power of the visuals in broadcast news inspired Conway in the same way the inspired Frank, “When I was here as an undergraduate, something about the mixture of the pictures, the video, the sound, the script, tying it all together that really fascinated me.”
After 20 years in TV news, Conway returned to the place where he first found his passion, IU. He now shares that passion for news with his students as a professor. He teaches the power of broadcast news to a group of students in the same position he was in 40 years ago. The ultimate goal, Conway says, is to make an audience care.
“The idea with all of journalism: how do I make you, the audience, care about this story?” Conway said.
Jim Rodenbush also works with students who are passionate about news. But there is one big difference between Rodenbush and Conway. Reuven Frank would refer to Rodenbush as a “word person.” Rodenbush is the director of student media for the Indiana Daily Student. He leads a group of undergrads who publish a student newspaper. Although Rodenbush works in a different medium than Conway, it’s clear that his love of news runs just as deep. He has been advising student media for 10 years and is inspired by the students. “Working with young kids just gives you hope that the profession that you’re in and the thing that you’ve given so much of your time to over the years is going to survive,” Rodenbush said.
https://youtu.be/wpkA8zQ2e1A
“Contested Ground,” tells more than the story of a broadcast about a major international conflict. It shows the power of news and the weight of telling a story through someone else’s eyes. The passion for storytelling and news is clear in the men involved in the book, Reuven Frank and Mike Conway. Frank helped build TV news as it exists today, and he inspired journalists like Conway to continue the profession. Now, as Conway tells Frank’s story, he passes the torch on to the next generation. A class of young men and women continue the legacy built over decades by passionate journalists like Frank, Conway, and Rodenbush.
“There’s going to be great work done, not just by this generation but the generation after that, and there’s a reason to still believe in reporting and believe in journalism,” Rodenbush said.