Media In The 1970s

The 1970s are identified as a particularly turbulent decade for American politics and culture, defined by singular events which forever transformed the country. Americans watched in their living rooms as the news revealed their president as a crook and a seemingly useless war ravaged a generation of men, searching for meaning and consolation. Flashing on colored screens, emblazoned in bold headlines, and crackling through radios, everyone from elite conservatives to baby boomers turned to media to guide them through a time of immense corruption as well as newly-mainstream revolution. During the 1970s, American journalism reflected a sudden distrust of government and the assimilation of fringe values through traditional and advancing forms
Both utilized conventional as well as rising forms of media, namingly color television. According to Mightier than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History by Rodger Streitmatter, ⅔ of American people said that TV was their major news source by 1972. With cable and developments in satellite technology, according to American Decades by Victor Bondi, U.S. media could now directly cover world events. Viewers witnessed bloody G.I.s suffering in the Vietnamese jungle and President Nixon’s iconic “I am not a crook” speech in color on their television screens. The computer’s late arrival meant an absence from these seminal events. Steven P. Jobs and Stephen G. Wozniak did not introduce the Apple II personal computer until 1977, according to “History of American Journalism: The 1970s”, published by The University of
According to “Two Visions of Responsibility: How National Commissions Contributed to Journalism Ethics” by Glen Feighery, several government commissions in the 1960s criticized journalism ethics and bias. Groups like the Presidential Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence called for journalists to establish or revise codes of conduct. These commissions believed that instances like the televised killing of reported JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald were due to “prejudice, sensationalism, and even inciting violence,” Feighery said. Government officials felt that emotion and competition between networks fueled reporting, especially the frenzy to cover the president’s assassination. They also insisted that this transformation include more racially diverse news staffs. By the mid 1970s, publications hired ombudsmen and slowly more people of color. These commissions raised questions of ethics and responsibility, brought up by stories like Watergate, as well as race in the newsroom. The relationship between news and government in the 1970s thus ensured some degree of accountability and responsibility in both