When I was growing up, we lived in a subdivision that had been built in the early 1950’s. All white, middle class, etc. Every dad on the block, and most of the dads of my friends, were WWII vets. Probably a few Korea vets in there, but it’s hard to describe the cocoon that existed at the time. People who all experienced more or less the …
When I was growing up, we lived in a subdivision that had been built in the early 1950’s. All white, middle class, etc. Every dad on the block, and most of the dads of my friends, were WWII vets. Probably a few Korea vets in there, but it’s hard to describe the cocoon that existed at the time. People who all experienced more or less the same thing at the same time, went on to form families at more or less the same time, bought houses at the same time, watched the same shows, worked at the same few big workplaces in town. Whether you were a Ford family, a Chevrolet family or a Dodge family was about the only difference. WWII was real in that it was only about 25 years in the past—it was like 9/11 is today to us.
And those families all listened to ABC, CBS, NBC and/or read a local paper. They got accurate curated news in 30 minute bits that matched what everyone else in the country knew about local, national and international events. America started getting fake news when Rush hit the airways in 1989 and America became more and more divided based on lucrative disinformation.
It was the removal of the Fairness Doctrine that stated if you were giving your opinion on TV, the station had to give time to the opposing opinion. So there were fewer "opinion" shows. The removal of that guardrail allowed Fox News to spread propaganda.
Watching cops busting heads on the nightly news, and seeing the carnage of the Viet Nam war really did change people’s minds about civil rights and about the justice of the war in Viet Nam.
When I was growing up, we lived in a subdivision that had been built in the early 1950’s. All white, middle class, etc. Every dad on the block, and most of the dads of my friends, were WWII vets. Probably a few Korea vets in there, but it’s hard to describe the cocoon that existed at the time. People who all experienced more or less the same thing at the same time, went on to form families at more or less the same time, bought houses at the same time, watched the same shows, worked at the same few big workplaces in town. Whether you were a Ford family, a Chevrolet family or a Dodge family was about the only difference. WWII was real in that it was only about 25 years in the past—it was like 9/11 is today to us.
And those families all listened to ABC, CBS, NBC and/or read a local paper. They got accurate curated news in 30 minute bits that matched what everyone else in the country knew about local, national and international events. America started getting fake news when Rush hit the airways in 1989 and America became more and more divided based on lucrative disinformation.
It was the removal of the Fairness Doctrine that stated if you were giving your opinion on TV, the station had to give time to the opposing opinion. So there were fewer "opinion" shows. The removal of that guardrail allowed Fox News to spread propaganda.
Watching cops busting heads on the nightly news, and seeing the carnage of the Viet Nam war really did change people’s minds about civil rights and about the justice of the war in Viet Nam.