Word: war
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Television's war" is a prisoner of its own structure, a prisoner of such facts that although TV is the chief source of news and information for the majority, the News and Information Act is still just another aspect of the world's greatest continuous floating variety show...
When we watch the typical war-coverage episode, we see, as Arlen says, "a picture of men three inches tall shooting at other men three inches tall." This episode is filmed and discussed by reporters man-handled by the military in Vietnam and edited at home by men consumed by the desire for "balance." Unfortunately, balance and accuracy are severely antagonistic. Instead of the balance of 365 five-minute bits, we would probably prefer an accurate, expansive evaluation of all these facts which have been presented as if they were equally important and commanding. The American desire for visible accomplishment...
...foot in a ghetto. That is what tears and burns: the invisible pain ignored, the visible pain ignored, leaders genuflecting before our conquest (Agnew raising a martini to Mars) of rock so far away, and the humiliating xenophobia which followed. There is no escape from the feeling that the war coverage is stylized and vacuous, that the painstaking objectivity is little more than censorship. Information is valuable only insofar as it educates and therefore changes and refines minds; but since TV will not offend its market with opinions, its objectivity is impenetrable conservatism...
...elbow, a man's jacket (who is the man?), part of a face, a woman's face. Ah, she is crying. One sees the tears. Two tears. One counts the tears. Two bombing raids... I wonder what it is that the people who run TV think about the war, because they have given us this keyhole view; we have given them the airwaves, and now, at this crucial time, they have given us back this keyhole view...
...hear. One example which Arlen describes was the irony of a Vietnam special by CBS newsman Morley Safer. As Westmoreland asks about basic training and remarks about the high morale, a soldier tells Safer that he dislikes riding down people's gardens. Safer then routinely asks him about the war. The soldier looks melancholy (did we see it?) and then, in one of those moments when everything comes alive in a gesture, tells Safer passionately: "The country's so beautiful, fertile, and everything...