Risk and Redemption: Surviving the Network News Wars

Robert Wiznura is an editor and writer who is currently involved in the
revising of the Literature, Communications, and Philosophy sections of
the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Risk and Redemption is part autobiography, part adventure story, and
part exposé. Kent’s account of his childhood and formative influences
is well written but somewhat overanalyzed. More successful are the
journalist’s chronicles of career-related adventures. (The scene in
which Kent experiences a Soviet air raid while reporting from the
mountains of Afghanistan rivals any action sequence from Raiders of the
Lost Ark.) Much of the book is devoted to the author’s crusade against
NBC. Ultimately, the reader is left with the image of a man of integrity
driven to the extremes of idealism and cynicism by what the news should
be and what it actually is.