Bracing for Bad News: Famous Broadcast Interruptions of the 20th Century.

Author Joe Garner believes there is nothing more chilling than hearing these four words: "We interrupt this broadcast ..." The book and audio-CD compilation We Interrupt This Broadcast: Relive the Events That Stopped Our Lives, From the Hindenburg to the Death of Princess Diana (Sourcebooks, pp. 153, 2 CDs) was created by the 20-year radio-biz veteran as "a tribute of sorts to radio and television and its journalists." Cable-TV newsman Bill Kurtis' narration supplements the audio recordings that capture the precise moment when the news was announced to the world, branding it into our collective memory.

Garner painted an aural landscape of electronic media's first century through 38 excerpts, beginning with Herb Morrison's chilling eyewitness account of the Hindenburg explosion in 1937 and continuing with Pearl Harbor, V-Day, the turmoil of the '60s and '70s with the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the deaths of icons Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. His collection moves on to the '80s and '90s, documenting the increasing influence of television, the end of the Cold War and the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Garner wraps up with the recent TWA Flight 800 crash en route to Paris and the death of Princess Diana.

As Walter Cronkite pointed out in his foreword, "Television has changed the face of journalism. In broadcasting, there is need for instant analysis and the provision of background information" so as to inform the audience. And mistakes can happen.

An example can be heard on one of the CDs. After the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981, press secretary James Brady was inaccurately reported as "dead." Later, news reporters apologized, explaining that he had actually been partially paralyzed and brain-damaged. The book and narration add that Brady and his wife went on to successfully lobby for legislation imposing a waiting period and background check before a handgun purchase.

Sometimes informative, the narration is at other times subjective and unnecessary, repeating information found in the text of the accompanying book. The CDs could have enhanced the written material; for example, audio snippets of the interrupted programs would have provided an interesting twist to the compilation's "broadcast interruptions." What TV programs were people watching? What radio dramas were they listening to?

In the book, excerpts of contemporaneous newspaper articles would have been a nice touch, adding texture to the brief news summaries. The black-and-white photographs are also a bit dry. Nowadays, news is usually delivered in full color, be it through television or the front page of The New York Times. So although black-and-white is historically correct for the older events, the use of color would more accurately reflect media portrayals of recent stories (e.g., the Oklahoma City bombing, Operation Desert Storm and the O.J. Simpson saga).

At times, Garner seems to revel in disaster, in a sense saying, "Look, where would we be without this kind of stuff? It's what makes us stars. If it bleeds, it leads. Read all about it!" The second volume (published in May) includes Clinton's impeachment proceedings, the Columbine High School shootings, and JFK Jr.'s airplane accident. Garner claimed he selected all of the events based on their ability to "stand the test of time."

Although occasionally sensationalistic, We Interrupt This Broadcast could be used to spice up a history lesson, spark conversations with grandparents, friends and relatives and to provoke discussions of the methods that the news media use to convey information to the public. The compilation is also a handy multimedia resource, its recordings and summaries providing a tangible link to broadcast journalism's past.