WAR CORRESPONDENTS AS SOURCES FOR HISTORY

Drawing on a study of the journalism, literature and autobiographies of war correspondents, this article examines some of the problems of historical research in the field of journalism studies. These include the difficulties of identifying the journalist in history; the methodological obstacles that confront the researcher in analysing historical journalistic texts and the challenge of distinguishing and understanding the pressures under which different types of journalistic texts have been produced. It is argued that the historiography of journalism is limited by ‘media centric’ approaches and that fictional representation and factual accounts are equally important to understanding the practice and performance of journalism.