Civil Rights Movement


The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Presents

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 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND TELEVISION

American television coverage of the Civil Rights Movement ultimately contributed to a redefinition of the country's political as well as its televisual landscape. From the 1955 Montgomery bus boycotts to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, technological inno- vations in portable cameras and electronic news gathering (ENG) equipment increasingly enabled television to bring the non-violent civil disobedience campaign of the Civil Rights Movement and the violent reprisals of Southern law enforcement agents to a new mass audience.

The NAACP's 1954 landmark Supreme Court case, Brotvn v. Board ofeducation, along with the brutal murder of 15-year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi and the subse- quent acquittal of the two white men accused of his murder marked the beginning of America's modern Civil Rights Movement. The unprecedented media coverage of the Till case rendered it a cause celebre that helped to swell the membership ranks of civil rights organizations nation- wide. As civil rights workers organized mass boycotts and civil disobedience campaigns to end legal segregation and white supremacist terror in the South, white segregationists mounted a counter-offensive that was swift and too often violent. Medgar Evers and other civil rights activists were assassinated. Black churches, businesses and residences with ties to the movement were bombed. Although this escalation of terror was intended to thwart the Civil Rights Movement, it had the effect of broadening support for civil rights.

These events were unfolding at the same time that the percentage of American homes equipped with television sets jumped from 56 to 92%. This was 1955 and television was securing its place in American society. Network news shows were also beginning to expand from the conventional fifteen to thirty minutes format, splitting the time between local and national issues. From the mid to late 1950s, these social, political, technological and cultural events began to con- verge. The ascendancy of television as the new arbiter of public opinion became increasingly apparent at this time to civil rights leaders and television news directors alike. Thus television's coverage of the Civil Rights Movement changed considerably, especially as the "anti-establishment politics" of the 1960s erupted. When television covered the consumer boycotts and the school desegregation battles in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, it was usually in a detached manner with a particular focus on the most dramatic and sensational occurrences. As well, the coverage in the late 1950s was intermittent, with a field reporter con- ducting a stand-up report from a volatile scene. Alternatively, an in-studio anchorman would narrate the unfolding events captured on film. Rarely, if ever, did black participants speak for themselves or address directly America's newly constituted mass television audience. Nevertheless, civil rights leaders understood how central television exposure was becoming to the success of the movement.

The desire to bring the struggle for civil rights into American living rooms was not limited to civil rights work- ers, however. The drama and sensationalism of peaceful civil rights protesters in violent confrontation with brutal agents of Southern segregation was not lost on news producers. News programmers needed to fill their expanded news programs with live telecasts of newsworthy events, and the public clashes around the Civil Rights Movement were too violent and too important to ignore.

For example, among the most enduring images telecast from this period were: 1955-shots of numerous boycotted busses driving down deserted Alabama streets; 1957-angry white mobs of segregationists squaring-off against black students escorted by a phalanx of Federal Troops in front of Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi; 1965-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a mass of black protesters across a bridge in Selma, Alabama. Most memorable, perhaps, of all these dramatic video images is the 1963 attack on young civil rights protesters by the Birmingham, Alabama, police and their dogs, and the fire department's decision to turn on fire hydrants to disperse the young black demonstrators, most of whom were children. Television cameras captured the water's force pushing young, black protesters down flooding streets like rubbish during a street cleaning. Unquestionably, this was compelling and revolutionary television.

By the early to mid 1960s, television was covering the explosive Civil Rights Movement regularly and forcefully. It was at this time that the young, articulate and telegenic Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had emerged from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as the Movement's chief spokesman. Commenting on King's oratorical skills, one reporter noted that his "message and eloquence were met with raptattention and enthusiastic support." He was the perfect visual symbol for a new era of American race relations. During this period television made it possible for civil rights workers to be seen and heard on an international scale.

Fanny Lou Hamer's televised speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City signaled a pivotal moment in the history of television's relationship to the civil rights campaign. Hamer's now famous "Is this America?" speech infuriated President Johnson, emboldened the networks, and riveted the nation. Even though Johnson directed the networks to kill the live feed carrying her speech on voting rights on behalf of theAfrican American Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the networks recognized the speech's powerful appeal and aired Hamer's address in its entirety later that night. Thus Hamer, a black woman and a sharecropper, became one of the first black civil rights activists to address the nation directly and on her own terms(see also Doing Justice: The Life and Trials of Albert Kinoy, the lawyer that defended the MFDP).

King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered on 28 August 1963, at the March on Washington rally. King's speech not only reached the 300,000 people from civil rights organizations, church adults from across the country into the deep South during the so-called "Freedom Summer" of 1964.

Civil rights organizers encouraged the participation of white liberals in the movement because organizers understood that the presence of whites would attract the television cameras and, by extension, the nation. No one was prepared for the tragic events that followed. As it turns out, television's incessant probing into the murders and subsequent month-long search for the bodies of two white, Northern civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and black, Southerner James Chaney did have a chilling effect on the nation. With the death of innocent white volunteers, television was convincing its suburban viewers around the country that the Civil Rights Movement did concern them as well.

For it was difficult to turn on the television without news of the Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman search. From late June to 4 August 1964, television regularly and consistently transmitted news of the tragedy to the entire nation. Television ultimately legitimated and lent new urgency to the decade- long struggle for basic human and civil rights that the Civil Rights Movement had difficulty achieving prior to the television age. The incessant gaze of the television cameras on the murders and disappearance of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, following on the heels of the Evers and Kennedy assassinations, resulted in mobilizing national support for the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, it was television's coverage of the Civil Rights Movement's crises and catastrophes that became a prelude to the medium's subsequent involvement with and handling of the later social and political chaos surrounding the Black Power, Anti-War, Free Speech and Feminist Movements. As veteran civil rights reporters went on to cover the assassinations of Malcom X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, as well as the ghetto uprisings thereafter, a whole new visual and aural lexicon of crisis-television developed, one that in many ways still defines how television news is communicated.

By 1968, it was clear that television's powerful and visceral images of the civil rights struggle had permeated many levels of American social and political reality. These images had helped garner support for such liberal legislation as the 1964 Voting Rights Act and President Lyndon B. Johnson's 'Great Society" and "War on Poverty" pro- grams, all of which are legatees of the Civil Rights Movement. As volatile pictures of Watts, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and other cities going up in smoke hit the television airwaves, they provoked a strong reaction by the end of the decade, marked by the presidential campaign slogans calling for law and order. Consequently, many of the very images that supported the movement simultaneously helped to fuel the national backlash against it. This anti- civil rights backlash contributed to the 1968 presidential election of conservative Republican Richard M. Nixon. While television news programs strove to cover the historic events of the day, entertainment shows responded to the Civil Rights Movement in their own fashion. With their concern over advertising revenues and corporate sponsorship, television's entertainment divisions decided on a turn to social relevance that did not tackle the controversy and social conflict of the Civil Rights Movement directly. Instead, it took the cautious route of slowly integrating (in racial terms) fictional programming by casting black characters in roles other than the usual domestic and comedic stereotypes. Beloved characterizations of domesticated blacks in such popular television shows as Beulah, Amos 'n' Andy, The Jack Benny Show, and The Danny Thomas Show, for example, slowly gave way to integrated cast programs depicting the network's accommodationist position on the "new frontier" ideology of Kennedy liberalism wherein black characters were integrated into American society as long as they supported American law and order. Among these shows were East Side/West Side (I 963-64), The Defenders (I 96 1 - 65), Naked City (1958-63), The Nurses (1962-65), 1 Spy (1965-68), Peyton Place (1964-69), Star Trek (1966-69), Mission: Impossible- (I 966-73), Daktai (I 966-69), NYPD (I 967-69) and Mod Squad (I 968-73), to name but a few. Rather than reflect the intense racial conflicts of bombed-out churches, blacks being beaten by Southern cops and massive demonstrations, these dramatic programs portrayed interracial cooperation and peaceful coexistence between black and white characters. For the first time on network television, many of the black characters in these shows were depicted as intelligent and heroic. While some of these shows were criticized for their tone black characters who staunchly up- held the status quo, these shows, nevertheless, did mark a significant transformation of the televisual universe. And for mass audiences accustomed to traditional white and black shows, the Civil Rights Movement brought a little more color to the television spectrum.

-Anna Everet

FURTHER RESOURCES

Doing Justice: The Life and Trials of Arthur Kinoy a film by Abby Ginzberg and narrated by Congressman Ron Dellums run time 50 minutes. The Museum of Broadcast Communications would like to thank Abby Ginzberg for permission to stream this dynamic documentary about a defender of Civil Rights in America.

Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh, editors. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows: 1946-Present. New York: Ballentine, 1979; 5th edition, 1992.

Gitlin, Todd. Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon, 1985.

Hampton, Henry. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. New York: Bantam, 1990.

Hill, George, with others. Black Women in Television. New York and London: Garland, 1990.

Hine, Darlene Clark, with others, editors. Black Women in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Kellner, Douglas. Television and the Crisis of Democracy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1990.

MacDonald, J. Fred. Blacks and White TV- Afro-Americans in Television Since 1948. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1992. -----. One Nation Under Television: The Rise and Decline of network 7V. New York: Pantheon, 1990.

McNeil, Alex. Total Television, Including Cable: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. New York: Penguin, 1980; 3rd edition, 1991.

Mills, Kay. This Little Light of mine.- The Life of Annie Lou Hamer. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Newcomb, Horace, editor. Television: The Critical View. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976; 4th edition, 1987.

See also Racism, Ethnicity, and Television

To view an MBC Lesson Plan about Civil Rights produced by our Education Department, click here.

 

Highlights
News Correspondent Howard K. Smith on the importance of television in the Civil Rights Movement
00:48
Ed Bradley on covering a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech during his first field reporting experience for a Philadelphia radio station
03:09
Joan Ganz Cooney on how The Children's Television Network was a beacon of hope after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
00:44
Marian Rees on becoming involved with the black community
05:40
Who talked about this topic

Larry Auerbach

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Larry Auerbach on dealing with discrimination against Harry Belafonte
02:00

Cliff Barrows

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Cliff Barrows on Billy Graham's response to the Civil Rights Movement
01:40

Ed Bradley

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Ed Bradley on covering a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech during his first field reporting experience for a Philadelphia radio station
03:09
Ed Bradley on covering the fight for control of a local New York school board, while a reporter at WCBS radio in New York in the late 1960s
02:51

David Brinkley

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David Brinkley on covering the Civil Rights Movement
00:56
David Brinkley on interviewing a young Martin Luther King, Jr. before the Brown vs Board of Education ruling came down
01:41
David Brinkley on Jesse Helms, at the time, a local Southern reporter who went on the air to "answer Brinkley's lies"
01:39

Tom Brokaw

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Tom Brokaw on covering the Civil Rights Movement from WSB in Atlanta
04:07
Tom Brokaw on covering the Watts Riots and various other stories at KNBC News in Los Angeles
06:53
Tom Brokaw on the role of the network news anchor, and on going to South Africa to cover the release of Nelson Mendela
03:41

Stan Chambers

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Stan Chambers on covering the Watts Riots in Los Angeles in 1965
04:36

Dick Gregory with Emerson College

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Dick Gregory on the challenges of an African-American comedian working nightclubs in the early 1960s
07:33
Dick Gregory on his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
06:25
Dick Gregory on his relationship with Martin Luther King, and on when it's appropriate to joke about tragedy
04:35
Dick Gregory on taking a stand on civil rights issues, and on the power of music
02:41
Dick Gregory on if it was worth it, and on summing up his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
11:52

Hugh Hefner with Emerson College

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Hugh Hefner on putting African American comedian Dick Gregory on Playboy's Penthouse and in his nightclubs
04:33

Joan Ganz Cooney

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Joan Ganz Cooney on how The Children's Television Network was a beacon of hope after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
00:44

Ossie Davis

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Ossie Davis on joining the Civil Rights Movement along with his wife, Ruby Dee, and on television's role in the movement
07:22
Ossie Davis on how television aided in the Civil Rights Movement
03:39

Mike Douglas

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Mike Douglas on interviewing Martin Luther King, Jr. on The Mike Douglas Show
01:28
Mike Douglas on having Malcom X on The Mike Douglas Show two days before his assassination
01:04

Betty Cole Dukert

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Betty Cole Dukert on Martin Luther King, Jr. on Meet the Press
03:31

Jerry Falwell

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Jerry Falwell on civil rights issues
03:01

Reuven Frank

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Reuven Frank on John Chancellor's coverage of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, AR for The Huntley-Brinkley Report
07:43

Murray Fromson

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Murray Fromson on his response to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, having met King while covering the marches in Selma, AL
04:46

Whoopi Goldberg

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Whoopi Goldberg on how seeing Sidney Poitier in the film In the Heat of the Night impacted her
01:51

Ellen Holly

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Ellen Holly on being at the 1963 March on Washington with her aunt Anna Arnold Hedgeman
06:03

Charles Floyd Johnson

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Charles Floyd Johnson on his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
00:20
Charles Floyd Johnson on executive producing John Lewis: Get in the Way -- the first documentary on Congressman John Lewis
05:30

Lamont Johnson

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Lamont Johnson on directing Crisis at Central High
04:24

Robert Johnson

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Robert Johnson on his observations of the Civil Rights Movement when he was a child
01:01

Ted Koppel

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Ted Koppel on reporting on the Civil Rights Movement for ABC radio
04:21

Sheila Kuehl

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Sheila Kuehl on Bob Denver as "Maynard G. Krebs" on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
06:16

Loretta Long

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Loretta Long on the power of television, and on the impact that her character of "Susan" on Sesame Street has had on black television characters
01:31

Robert MacNeil

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Robert MacNeil on covering Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and the Civil Rights Movement
05:34
Robert MacNeil on covering the Civil Rights Movement
05:33
Robert MacNeil on The Whole World is Watching
09:23

Abby Mann

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Abby Mann on developing the made-for-television movie King
10:57

Anita Mann

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Anita Mann on witnessing bigotry towards African-American dancers
04:10

Mitch Miller

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Mitch Miller on Leslie Uggams, who was a featured vocalist on Sing Along with Mitch
02:51

John Moffitt

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John Moffitt on how The Ed Sullivan Show reflected the Civil Rights Movement
00:55

Bill Monroe

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Bill Monroe on the major news stories covered during his time at WDSU in New Orleans, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Emmett Till trial
04:01
Bill Monroe on the introduction of editorials on local news shows, like WDSU, and on their editorials on school desegregation
08:43
Bill Monroe on winning a Peabody Award in 1960 for his editorials on school desegregation
03:48
Bill Monroe on NBC News' coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, and on covering Martin Luther King, Jr. and his relationship with John F. Kennedy, and on covering the assassinations of the era
04:09
Bill Monroe on his greatest career achievements and regrets, and on the role television played in the Civil Rights Movement
05:05
Bill Monroe on the events that have changed the country the most in the 20th century
02:43

Bill Moyers

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Bill Moyers on Lyndon Johnson having a good moment on television
00:33
Bill Moyers on Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Movement, and dealing with the FBI trying to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr.
07:45

Roger Mudd

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Roger Mudd on reporting on the Civil Rights Movement for CBS News (including the March on Washington)
12:35

Horace Newcomb

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Horace Newcomb on how television made him and the society more socially aware
05:34
Horace Newcomb on participating in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s
05:22

Nichelle Nichols

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Nichelle Nichols on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
05:02

Roscoe Orman

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Roscoe Orman on meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Civil Rights Leaders in the South; on TV news coverage of the movement
05:41

Dan Rather

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Dan Rather on covering the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s
Dan Rather on reporting in Mississippi when James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi

Marian Rees

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Marian Rees on becoming involved with the black community
05:40
Marian Rees on executive producing Ruby Bridges
14:48
Marian Rees on the African-American crew on Ruby Bridges  and gaining Ruby Bridges' trust
06:16
Marian Rees on the Norman Rockwell painting on which Ruby Bridges  was based and recreating it
07:25

Della Reese

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Della Reese on dealing with racism
00:49
Della Reese on how she's perceived in America because of the color of her skin, and on fighting for civil rights
01:05

Tim Reid

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Tim Reid on attending the March on Washington and his involvement with the Civil Rights Movement
03:13
Tim Reid on addressing race head-on in his stand-up comedy act with Tom Dreesen
06:23

Andy Rooney

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Andy Rooney on writing CBS News documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s including Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed hosted by Bill Cosby
03:02

Marlene Sanders

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Marlene Sanders on hearing Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech first-hand in Washington D.C. during the March on Washington
01:28

Max Schindler

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Max Schindler on directing the NBC News special American Revolution '63
03:47
Max Schindler on covering Martin Luther King, Jr.
01:51
Max Schindler on directing coverage of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
02:03

Reese Schonfeld

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Reese Schonfeld on television news covering the Civil Rights Movement
09:47

Robert Schuller

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Robert Schuller on dealing with Civil Rights and racism on Hour of Power
04:01

Nina Shaw

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Nina Shaw on Robert Guillaume's role as a civil rights advocate
00:52

Sid Sheinberg

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Sid Sheinberg on his participation in the Civil Rights Movement while in law school
07:30

Howard K. Smith

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News Correspondent Howard K. Smith on the importance of television in the Civil Rights Movement
00:48

Sanford Socolow

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Sanford Socolow on CBS' coverage of the Civil Rights Movement
03:44

Brandon Stoddard

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Brandon Stoddard on developing Roots  and Roots: The Next Generations
23:36

Saul Turteltaub

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Saul Turteltaub on his friendship with Richard Pryor and Pryor's appearance at a live show called "Calm L.A.," which was meant to calm tensions following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
02:39

Leslie Uggams

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Leslie Uggams on the role television played in the Civil Rights Movement
01:05

Ellen M. Violett

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Ellen M. Violett on writing The Defenders episode "Nobody Asks What Side You're On"
06:34

James Wall

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James Wall on stage-managing CBS's coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral
03:54

Av Westin

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Av Westin on various major news events in his career
11:02

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