cover image Fighting for Air: In the Trenches with Television News

Fighting for Air: In the Trenches with Television News

Liz Trotta. Simon & Schuster, $22.45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-67529-5

Emmy Award winner Trotta, who spent some 20 years as a TV reporter with NBC and CBS beginning in 1961, here tells the story of her career. She served two tours in Vietnam, accompanying GIs into the jungles, and is still haunted by the experience. Trotta also covered the India-Pakistan war, ``the Troubles'' in Northern Ireland, the Iran hostage story, the trial of Claus von Bulow and the Grenada invasion. Italian-American, Catholic, a strong conservative and a sharp observer, she often finds herself politically at odds with her colleagues, yet has never been accused of biased reportage. Writing with wit, freed from the constraints of her trade, Trotta skewers onetime presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy for his ``low opinion of the world,'' effectively harpoons ``oafishly macho'' Jimmy Breslin, ``small-town sorehead'' Dan Rather, the women's movement in the U.S.--with its ``special-interest crankiness masquerading as the people's will''--and Woodstock, acme of the ``druggy self-indulgence of the counterfeit hip world.'' (Jun.)