Revolution Televised.pdf

30 Was the Revolution Televised?
which documentarians and journalists sought to interpret and explain
the historical moment to the American public. These programs
are a gauge of the media’s predilections and ideologies. There is perhaps
no better way to disentangle revisionist history, nostalgia, and
memory than to revisit texts from the specific historical moment
and examine the social, economic, and political environment in
which these documentaries were made.
The Golden Age of Television Documentary
and the Myth of the ’60s Newsman
Television in the 1950s concerned itself primarily with entertainment
programming. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, network
television turned toward developing its news coverage and journalistic
depth. Documentary production was seen as one avenue
to journalistic legitimacy. While public service and other nonentertainment
programming was usually left to unpopular times
on the schedule, such as Sunday afternoons, networks invested
heavily in prime-time documentaries in the early ’60s; this period
is now referred to as the Golden Age of Television Documentary. 13
Numerous television critics have speculated about the motivations
behind this change in programming, suggesting such reasons as
atonement for the quiz show scandals of the 1950s and response
to the government antitrust investigations. Many credit the impact
of Newton Minow, the Kennedy administration’s chairman of the
FCC. In his speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in
May 1961, Minow declared television a vast wasteland and thus
gained notoriety within the industry as the first chairman of the
FCC to actually deal with the content of television. 14 Minow’s influence
was a common concern of networks and producers because
he held the power to revoke broadcasting licenses.
In Redeeming the Wasteland, documentary scholar Michael Curtin
states that he initially believed that television’s reliance on the documentary
genre was a liberal investment in civil rights initiatives
and a reflection of John F. Kennedy’s political leanings. However,
through an analysis of the flagship documentary series of the three
networks, CBS Reports, NBC White Paper, and ABC’s Bell and
Howell Close-Up! Curtin asserts that documentaries of the Golden
Age were produced at a
distinctive and complicated moment when political and corporate
leaders as well as network officials embraced television documen-