Brian Winston was the first Lincoln Chair of Communications at the University of Lincoln

University of Lincoln

The University of Lincoln is an English university founded in 1992, with origins tracing back to the foundation and association with the Hull School of Art 1861....

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He was a Pro Vice Chancellor for 2005-2006 and the former dean of communications.

He is the former head of the faculty of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster. He is a former dean of the College of Communications at Penn State University (State College

State College, Pennsylvania

State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...

, PA

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

) and former chair of cinema studies at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

. He was also the director of the Center for Journalism Studies at the University of Wales

University of Wales

The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...

 College of Cardiff. Winston was also a founder member of the Glasgow Media Group

Glasgow Media Group

The Glasgow Media Group, also known as Glasgow University Media Group, is a leading group of media researchers based in Glasgow, Scotland, who pioneered the analysis of television news in a series of studies starting in 1976 with Bad News...

 and a co-author of its first two books Bad News(1976) and More Bad News (1980).

In 1985, he won an Emmy for documentary script writing. He has worked on television current affairs and features and as a print journalist. He is also known for being one of the first to write on the subject of documentary and ethics.

In this Internet Archive video (13.35) from 1983, he analyzes TV network news. His book Media Technology and Society was named the best book of 1998 by the American Association for History and Computing.

Winston has described himself as a British Jew.

Books

• Misunderstanding Media (Harvard University Press, 1986)
• Claiming the Real (1995)
• Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television (Paper - 1997)
• Media Technology and Society (Hardcover and Paper - 1998; Kindel - 2007 )
• Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries (2001)
• Messages (Hardcover and Paper- 2005; Kindle-2007)