Alternative Views was a sixty minute public affairs program cablecast twice weekly on Austin Community Television, Austin, Texas, between 1978 and 1998. Produced by Douglas Kellner, a University of Texas philosophy professor and Frank Morrow, the program grew out of a 1977 media study group designed to examine distortion and censorship in the media. As a result, Alternative Views sought to present issues ignored by conventional media. Topics addressed in the programs include: alternative energy sources, the CIA, civil liberties, international politics, labor unions, the effects of multinational corporations, poverty, pornography and violence towards women, racism, and U.S. foreign policy. Alternative Views also investigated local issues such as Austin politics, urban development and the University of Texas. International topics include interviews with former political prisoners from Chile, Iran, and Argentina, survivors of the Nagasaki bombing, and returned travelers from Cuba, Vietnam, El Salvador, Jamaica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Iran, South Africa, and Central Africa. Notable guests to the program were: anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott; former U.S. attorney General Ramsey Clark; film director Edward Dmytryk; Jim Hightower; civil rights lawyer William Kunstler; biologist George Wald; and former U. S. Senator Ralph Yarborough.
Videocassettes, financial records, correspondence, programming materials, articles of incorporation, and by-laws comprise the Alternative Views Video Collection (1978-1998), which documents the operations of the Austin, Texas, public affairs program. The collection primarily consists of 574 sixty-minute 3/4 " videocassette recordings arranged chronologically according to their date of exhibition. Those programs beginning with a twenty minute news segment are labeled with an (N), while those with information pertaining to the CIA are labeled with a (C). Furthermore, the collection contains operating records for the program.
This collection is open for research use.
This collection is stored remotely. Advance notice required for retrieval. Contact repository for retrieval.
Alternative Views Video Collection, 1978-1998, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s