Television Under The Swastika - The History Of Nazi Television

[Ace Acme]

8. When TV news first started in the 1960s

Last edited Wed Dec 18, 2013, 11:22 AM - Edit history (1)

... the broadcasters presented it as a public service, for the prestige. They wanted to demonstrate that they could be trusted to report as reliably as the newspapers, and they did not expect to make a profit.

Once the credibility of the TV news was established, the beancounters took control of the networks, and wanted to "rationalize" the news programs to make them more "efficient" as profit centers. Investigative journalism is expensive, and most TV viewers are satisfied with cheaply produced celebrity gossip and waterskiing squirrels. Once the TV news was corrupted, the newspapers had to follow suit.

One of the things that struck me about TV news advertisements was how prominent the automobile commercials were. And then I recognized that the function of TV news was not just to deliver the eyeballs to the ads, but also to deliver confident upscale consumer eyeballs. After all, the ads had to convince people who already had perfectly good cars that they should go into debt to buy a brand new car just because it would make them feel good. That means you have to present a worldview in the news that makes those potential purchasers feel that everything on the news front is pretty much under control. No news about stolen elections, war crimes, defective government investigations, the power of the 1%.