The media which was so fiercely criticized by McCarthy and his followers was put under particular pressure to minimize the potential for public dissent. Modern industrialized society was uprooted from traditional, rural communities and moving towards gesellschaft, a social order in which traditional values were given the back seat to weaker, more ephemeral rules and relationships often bottom lining with the pursuit of money.
Alas, it is doubtful a Murrow would have made it to the top today. This has lead to radical downsizing of news organisations. Furthermore, any voice that would speak out against the injustices of this gray propaganda would face accusations of being unpatriotic or a sympathizer of the communist cause. The oppressive forces of Mass Society Theory were fully at work.Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:https://smamdouh.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/good-night-and-good-luck-a-look-at-mass-society-theory-then-and-now/The atmosphere was ripe for “anti-propaganda propaganda”. There’s just one problem, as the Hollywood Reporter laid out in a piece on Friday: the rest of the world hates this America First shit, and that’s threatening the bottom line of the NBCs and CBSes of the world. It says here “good luck for Tommy”. There’s also the Endorsement. Would a Murrow have made a difference?
Did Murrow sympathize with communist ideas? The tragedy of such a synergy is that the news becomes just another commodity meant for consumption and loses its core values which are to find, understand, prove and relay facts.Accodring to Tammy Rosso, head of the media department at Webster University Geneva, today’s news programs, as opposed to those of Murrow’s era, are required to be profit making.
The Film “Good Night and Good Luck” and Theories of Propaganda Propaganda is a communication strategy that aims to influence the ideas and behavior of people without the subjects being consciously aware they are being manipulated (Baran and Davis 43). It is produced by Snapchat and hosted by Snap's head of news Peter Hamby, a former political reporter at CNN.The first episode of the series was published in January 2016, and is in its eighth season, reportedly reaching roughly 6 million viewers per episode. Each episode is available for 48 hours on Snapchat and past episodes are searchable in the app as well.Midway through the season, poll questions were added. The dividing line between these two men was that one believed the end justified the means, and the other refused to compromise on his integrity and worked to inform, rather than manipulate. This is easy. “One of the profound ironies of the efforts to oppose the rise of totalitarianism is that these efforts often threatened to produce the very form of government they were intended to prevent” (Baran and Davis 60)Senator Joseph McCarthy was the post WWII personification of the Mass Society Theory. These postcards are representative of women as symbols of the nation. He warns his viewers that unless journalists can practice, free of any pressures and manipulations, the people will be lied to with no one left to verify the validity of the information provided to the public. Also, good luck getting those songs out of your head.
And here again, capturing the spirit of America – … McCarthy’s fear of a mass society was so strong he was ready to disregard some of the fundamental rights his forefathers worked to establish.