Centuries of Silence The Story of Latin American Journalism

Subjects:

• Communications » Journalism
• Multicultural Studies » Latin American Studies

Reviews:

• Probably the most detailed account of the Latin American mass media ever published in English, this well-annotated book presents a history of Latin American mass communication from precolonial times to the present. Covering the development of journalism education in Latin America and reviewing some of the arguments critical of the current globalization of media technologies, Ferreira provides less a discussion of news organizations than an overview of Latin American media and social policy and cultural and social development. He cuts across borders from Mexico to Chile and is mindful to include historical comparisons of how media trends in Latin America differed from those in the US and western Europe....The book will be a valuable resource for those interested in international mass media. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals.
  —Choice May 2007
• The greatest strength of Ferreira's work lies in his successful synthesis of an increasing body of secondary material on the region and the subject. His book provides a useful reference for historians and students who desire a compendium of the major developments and struggles that journalists have endured over the past 200 years in Latin America....[I]t is clear that Ferreira went to great lengths to synthesize the existing body of scholarship. His efforts are commendable and his work provides a useful took for instructors interested in a survey of the literature of the history of the news media in Latin America.
  —Journalism History Fall 2007
• Centuries of Silence: The Story of Latin American Journalism by Leonardo Ferreira takes on a huge taskto review and summarize the story of Latin American newspapers and broadcast journalism. A member of the communication faculty at the University of Miami as well as a consultant to the Inter American Press Association, the author grew up in Colombia before attending college and grad school in the United States. His history is critical, in almost every sense of that term, as he finds the press too much under the thumb of various national elites, and rarely sticking up for the common person or criticizing government personnel or policies.
  —Communication Booknotes Quarterly Summer 2007
• Ferreira begins by asking whether there was a nascent or proto-journalism in pre-Columbian America. Then he looks at such stages of Latin American journalism as the idealism surrounding liberation from Spain; war, censorship, and propaganda during the 19th century; revolution and the Cold War; and tension between globalization and a fair and humane world.
  —Reference & Research Book News Spring 2007
• [L]eonardo Ferreira combines a trilingual review of the literature with his own original research to produce a book that challenges conventional theories about how the region's news media came to be what they are today and, indeed, what exactly they are....Besides providing a base for further work in the field, this book will complement standard interpretations of Latin American media scholars as well as researchers who want to understand the background that has shaped an expanding segment of the potential U.S. media audience....Centuries of Silence makes an important contribution to that understanding.
  —American Journalism February 2007

• Endorsement From Mike Kryzanek
  Bridgewater State College: Ferreira has crafted a well researched and thorough study of Latin American journalism. This text fills a noticeable void in the literature on the role that journalism has played in the areas of democratization, good government and public opinion formation. Centuries of Silence is certain to be must reading for those interested in how journalism developed in Latin America and how it has changed over time.
• Endorsement From Dr. Luis Ramiro Beltrán,
  Latin American communication research pioneer and first recipient of the McLuhan Teleglobe Canada Award: The extraordinary work by researcher Leonardo Ferreira rescues the Pre-Columbian origins of news activity in Latin America. It brings into question the fallacy of "freedom of the press" in this continent and denounces that its contemporary journalism contributes to perpetuate both intranational domination and international dependency--which, by oppressing people and silencing their voices, impede the formation of true democracy. This book is also a timely and exemplary call to further investigate the journalistic production of Latin American liberators and their communication perspectives.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword
• Introduction: When Good News Is Bad News
• Chapter 1 Whose Truth on True Street
• Chapter 2 A Taste of Freedom
• Chapter 3 Taken by War and Censorship
• Chapter 4 Modernization and the Press
• Chapter 5 How Not to Start a Century
• Chapter 6 Hot and Cold Wars, Warm Presses
• Chapter 7 Dreaming a Fair World
• Chapter 8 One Step Forward, Dozen Backwards
• Bibliography
• Index