Revolution Televised.pdf

Was the Revolution Televised? 31
tary in an explicit attempt to mobilize public opinion behind a more
activist [cold war] foreign policy. . . . like earlier mass media campaigns
that accompanied the two world wars, this flourishing of
documentary activity was part of an ambitious effort to awaken
the public to its “global responsibilities” and thereby consolidate
popular support for decisive action overseas under the aegis of the
New Frontier. 15
The international arena was seen as a burgeoning market for American
television, and television documentaries were a vehicle to encourage
public support of anticommunist foreign policy while promoting
a positive image of America to a foreign audience.
New Frontier rhetoric contrasted sharply with the civil rights
realities of the United States at the time. Yet these documentaries
had to tackle this inherent contradiction and the advancing Civil
Rights and Black Power movements. As one of the few writers
to deal with African Americans in television in the 1960s, J. Fred
MacDonald’s reading of the Golden Age is worth considering.
MacDonald asserts:
If Newton Minow’s new prescription for broadcasters was confusing
and unnerving, President Kennedy’s political priorities offered
television executives a direction in which to exert their energies
and placate the new administration: the civil rights movement. . . .
these actualities brought home the necessity for, and intensity of, the
black social movement. 16
These comments suggest that civil rights became a key issue for network
documentarians. In actuality, from 1959 to 1964, only 11 of
the 147 documentaries of the flagship documentary series even dealt
with civil rights, the majority targeting an international agenda. 17
The view of the documentary as bringing home the necessity for
and intensity of the black social movement is, however, commensurate
with the networks’ rhetoric that documentary production was
objective and had the ability to create social change. Thus, critics
such as MacDonald are trapped in these beliefs about television
news without thorough analysis of the situation. Consequently, a
reading audience of this black television history is also left with
false notions of these television documentaries.
This notion of objectivity is at the heart of American journalism,
and it flourished in the Golden Age. Bill Leonard, who eventually
ran CBS news, describes the producer of documentaries as follows: