The Revolution Will Be Televised

By Rick Belbutoski

This week isn’t about pop culture analysis, but rather a focus on the role that media plays in shaping the way its consumers perceive some of the grandest events of their lives. Thanks to Joey Parrish’s conversation with Professor John Glen, we here at Media Matters were able to pay tribute to the holiday we marked last Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The late 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s were times when television news broadcasting was in its infancy. Professor Glen spoke to how the young generation of baby boomers understood how to use television to their advantage, often flooding the airwaves with images of peaceful protests being met with harsh backlash.

 

Going forward here, I will explore the effects of media in this time period as well draw on how technology has changed the way we relate to the world today. I’ll be doing this by using three other historical events as examples: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, America landing men on the moon, and the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam in comparison with our involvement in the war in Iraq.

In 1960 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected our nation’s president by the narrowest margin ever at that time. Our country’s first Catholic president faced major challenges early in his term. A failed attempt to invade Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The communist governments of the former Soviet Union and Cuba joined forces, moving Soviet weaponry in range of American targets. Arguably one of the tensest times of the Cold War era, this thirteen day standoff in October of 1962 could have meant the end of our country as we knew it. Less than a year later, President Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, Texas while riding in his limousine. He was assassinated before a live television audience; his death conformed by a television news media that was more concerned about journalistic ethics than market share and spectacle.

In his Inauguration Speech in 1961, President Kennedy called the United States to go to the moon. The Soviet Union had succeeded in putting the first men into orbit in 1959, and after Kennedy’s call to action, a new kind of American cowboy began exploring a new kind of frontier. Though some are reluctant to believe that the United States ever landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, this event was broadcast to a world watching in silence as man accomplished what was thought to be impossible.

While the world was busy watching men land on the moon for the first time, the United States was involved in a war that disturbed the majority of the nation. Television coverage of the war in the late 1960s and early ’70s as well as images of anti-war protests lead to a remarkable shift in the nation’s feelings about our role in Vietnam. A Gallup poll taken in late August of 1965 reported that 60% of Americans felt that sending to troops to Vietnam was a good decision. By May of 1971 Gallup reported that only 28% of Americans agreed with the war.

While Vietnam coverage exposed harsh realities, Iraq war coverage seemed to play more like sensationalist spectacle. 

Media plays a major role in how we relate to the world around us. In cataclysmic events, such as these, media brings these events into our living rooms. On Saturday’s radio show on 91.3 WCRD: The Pulse of Ball State, we used these historic events as examples to illustrate the importance of vigilantly seeking information in a world that is now more heavily mediated than ever before.

Tune in this Saturday at 11 a.m. on 91.3 FM for another edition of Media Matters: The Public Screen.