During our unbelievably lively discussion of civil rights in the media we broached the topic of how the media used the civil rights movement to get better ratings/viewership/etc.. During this time in the united states Television was still in its infancy, but the race to get the most viewers was on. Television was such a new medium that people didn’t understand how to fully grasp it’s potential, but the ratings war was on. So, unfortunately, lots of television journalists began to act in ways that were unsavory and in some cases unethical. The ethics in the media were at a low, in an attempt to gain more viewers and have more suspenseful news.
http://www.newseum.org/digital-classroom/video/civil-rights/default.aspx
However, the television news media during the civil rights era wasn’t all bad. Through the use of nationwide television broadcasts the rest of the country was able to see what was going on in the south. People that lived in the northern parts of the country and even Canada were awakened to the fact that there was rampant racism, or to put it in the words of Professor Campbell “Racism was alive and well” in the south. Now of course racism still existed and wasn’t uncommon in the rest of the United States, but the level of hatred and persecution during the civil rights era was unbelievably high in the southern states, and thanks to the magic of television people all across the country were awakened to the reality of what was happening in their own country.
http://www.paleycenter.org/the-civil-rights-movement-and-television
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