Radio telegraphy made the 1912 sinking of the Titanic the print media’s first full-scale feeding frenzy. In Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Event and Myth (Praeger, £39.95/$39.95, ISBN 0 275 95352 l), author Paul Heyer reveals the roots of the media’s fascination then and now with the baffling disaster that resulted from a liner, brimming with rich and famous, steaming at full speed into an ice-field it had been warned about. The role of unregulated radio in confusing the press about the condition of the stricken liner is well communicated, but the overall latterday significance of the disaster is somewhat overblown.
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