      |
      
I Media Main I Media by Decade I Media by Genre I Media Timeline I |
Media
battles the Government
|
|
In the 1970s, reporters took stronger roles in uncovering news. They revealed corruption in the government that lead all the way to the president. In another case, the Pentagon Papers started a legal battle between the powers of the government to protect its secrets and the press' freedom to publish information for the public good.
The Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Scandal
Two historical clashes between the government and the press occurred in the early 1970s. When the New York newspaper, Times, in June 1971, began publishing a series of news articles summarizing the contents of a 47-volume study of the origins of the Vietnam War, the "Pentagon Papers" case erupted. The study was purely historical and revealed no military secrets, but was highly explosive in terms of political and diplomatic interest. Certain government lies and policy disputes between America and Vietnam's administration were revealed. The White House immediately got an injuction to stop its publication. Finally, after a series of court battles, the Supreme Court recognized the need for government secrecy but found that the government had not made a case that the Pentagon Papers was a threat to national security. The publications of the Pentagon Papers continued. The case significantly damaged the US government's ability to hide information.
The second clash was the Watergate affair. The term 'Watergate' applies to a wide range of illegal and unethical behaviour by the Nixon White House, during his presidential re-election campaign in 1972. These included disruption of Democratic campaign activities, burglary, and receiving illegal campaign contributions. The initial break-in at the Watergate offices, the Democratic Party headquarters, in 1972, led to a series of investigations by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Their committed investigative reporting uncovered the corruption and illegal activities within Nixon's administration, and won them the Pulitzer Prize for their stories. Later, it was discovered that President Nixon had personally ordered cover-ups of the burglary. Nixon became the first American president to resign from office on 9 August 1974, and was subsequently pardoned by his successor President Gerald Ford in September. The media had brought down a president.
Women's magazines were well received in the 1970s. These new publications were published by and for women, addressing real issues of concern and interest, such as women's health and female spirituality. Today's Christian Women made its debut in 1978, its article often to do with spiritual development, parenting and controlling anger. Christian bookstores, educational institutions and therapy programs subsidized it, rather than advertisers. In July 1972, 'Ms.' Magazine began publication, serving primarily as a forum for women's liberation. Ms. interviewed some of the world's most powerful women of the Seventies, and continues to do so today.
From the 1970s onwards, blockbusters dominated the film industry. Usually the big American companies would invest millions in one or two big films, or blockbusters, a year. The trend in the mid-1970s was disaster movies, such as The Towering Inferno (1974), while in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was the science-fiction blockbusters such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Wars (1977), which has a global following, and ET (1982). Various war and adventure films such as Rambo (1985), the Indiana Jones films, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Top Gun (1986), packed with action, have done very well too. Australia's Crocodile Dundee of 1987, was a smash box-office success.
Quality educational programming for children began in 1969,
with debut of Public Broadcasting System's Sesame Street, which still
shows today. In the early 1970s, concern over the connections between children's
television programs and advertising arose. It was found that 40 of the top
60 cereals, that were being advertised to children on television had little
nutritional content. Action for Children's Television (ACT) forced a reduction
in advertising during children's programming in 1970. They successful pressured
the networks to limit the advertising of food products and toys on Saturday-morning
cartoon programs.
In 1969, tobacco companies themselves proposed a three-year plan to phase
out cigarette advertisements on television and radio. Britain's Royal College
of Physicians had reported that smoking cigarettes had become a cause of deaths
comparable to the great epidemics of typhoid and cholera in the 1800s. On
January 2, 1970, a ban on radio and television cigarette advertising took
effect, taking away almost $220 million in advertising. Still, US cigarette
sales reached $547.2 billion in the early Seventies. Liquor, with the exception
of beer and wine, has mostly voluntarily stayed off radio and television advertising.
The Seventies was a turbulent decade with the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers. News became more believable as people witnessed events on television, rather reading or hearing from radio or newspapers, as they occurred. Television would continue to grow in the next decade as new networks formed and satellite television emerged, allowing events from around the world to be broadcast live.
