The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left

by Todd Gitlin

Book Overview

"The whole world is watching!" chanted the demonstrators in the Chicago streets in 1968, as the TV cameras beamed images of police cracking heads into homes everywhere. In this classic book,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520040244
• ISBN13: 9780520040243
• Release Date: October 1981
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

political views don't change reality

Yes. Establishment supporters would like you to push this book aside. The media in those days was neither conservative or liberal. It was both and neither. I remember when local TV news (I lived in the Phili area) had editorials from their staff. One night would be a conservative view, another night would be a leftist or a radical view. The media outlets, in general were a lot more independent. Sure they were owned by rich guys and rich stockholders, but not all of those people were controlled, bought and paid for by the establishment. The media reported much more fairly then. The reason why hippies were seen and heard more and more on TV is because they WERE a cultural phenonmenae and people wanted to know and see and hear what they were about in order to form an opinion. The music people were listening to reflected that cultural change and difference and was therefore "news" as well. People spent a lot of money making a choice to purchase that counterculture music thru concerts and records and others wanted to know why and get a grip on what was happening in their world. That IS news. But the establishment at that time didn't fully understand the importance of TV to influence the masses UNTIL the hippies and their ideas spread like wildfire and gained general acceptance which eventually changed law. When Nixon debated Kennedy in 1960, they both failed to understand how even their physical appearance influenced how people viewed them. They both made mistakes. But by 1972, Nixon had learned and often came off looking and sounding pretty good. I even liked him although I lean liberal. Most establishment types, and even my parents, held that TV was primarily for entertainment and not to be taken too seriously. But as the public turned against segregation, Viet Nam, beating hippies (who were after all thier CHILDREN or their neighbors children) and occaisionally saw some stuffed-shirt politician behave like an ogre or say something insane and vote the idiot out of office ONLY THEN did the ruling elite realize that TV was a factor in influencing thought and action. Only then did they take it seriously. The young people of the time already "got" this and used it to their advantage. While their moms and dads were busy working or being tired from working, the kids were watching Elvis shake his hips, the Beatles long hair, Bob Dylan on the Mike Douglas show, The Temptations and Bill Cosby on The Hoolywood Palace thinking why do we want to segregate and oppress people like the Temptations and Bill Cosby and how unfair and evil that is. As far as David Crosby and drugs...It's a well known fact that pot and LSD were used for years without problems. The CIA experimented with them to use them for truth-getting and mind control but failed. At the time, they were not illegal. The hippies used and abused them for creativity enhancement and mind expansion which the establishment hated. They didn't want free-thinkers to challange them or c

Important contribution to media studies

This book is widely used in college courses because it provides an important example of how the media works as a part of social organization.

SDS and the Media

"The Whole World is Watching," is Todd Gitlin's doctoral dissertation modified for publication. Gitlin was president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the early 1960's before moving on to other radical causes. Gitlin was educated at Harvard and is currently (I think) a professor at NYU in media studies and journalism. This book deals with the influence of the media on SDS during the 1960's. He's written other works on media studies as well an epic history of the 1960's. Gitlin is definitely the intellectual, and it shows in this book.In "The Whole World is Watching," Gitlin argues that the theory of hegemony as articulated by Antonio Gramsci can be applied to the media and its operations. Gitlin argues that the media is a tool of the corporate liberal apparatus and that the media acts as a sort of "middle-man" between elites and the masses. The media controls and directs how people think by using "frames." These frames limit the parameters in which discourse can take place in the public sphere. Frames can and do change, however, as elites change their opinions. Gitlin uses SDS as a test case for his theory. He argues that SDS, once it came to media attention in 1965, was framed by the media as an anti-war group, totally ignoring all of the other things SDS stood for (participatory democracy, etc.). This frame attracted thousands of people who joined SDS without any knowledge of what SDS was all about. This influx of people ended up changing the group for the worse, and SDS died a painful death several years later due to sectarian Marxist wackos. Along the way, Gitlin looks at various other traits of the media. For me, the most important was his examination of how media creates celebrity. This treatment is particularly important in relation to SDS because it contributed to its downfall. Gitlin shows how SDS's schizophrenic attitudes toward leadership (where organization was needed and advocated by some but opposed by those who hated hierarchy) allowed the media to create harmful divisions. The media tends to profile only the people who are photogenic or those who make good copy. Unfortunately for SDS, these were usually not the best qualified or most stable people. Those that got the attention parlayed their success into monetary gains, alienating other people in the organization. Mark Rudd comes to mind as one who best personifies this problem. Rudd, who sported a comb over that would make Senator Carl Levin jealous, went on to fame and glory with the Weatherman organization. His claims to media celebrity went so deep that when he turned himself in to the authorities in 1977, reporters turned out in droves for what turned out to be a non-event. What is important here is that the media concentrate on image over substance. This can be very harmful to an organization with serious issues to debate.Gitlin ends his dissertation with a critique of the sources he used for his research. Gitlin was only able to peruse the CBS archives, as A

Television and Journalistic Objectivity

Todd Gitlin is a media crtic extraordinaire. His teachings in journalism and media departments across North America are unmatched, and he is well-known as a writer on Salon. The Whole World is Watching is an indepth and scholarly look at how the media portrayed left-leaning student protest in New York and Washington in the 1960s. The words that the New York Times used to describe the protests were as important as the amount of ink they received. Gitlin demonstrates how the coverage the student protests received in the mainstream media determined how the general public perceived their cause.Gitlin is an excellent writer and The Whole World is Watching is highly researched and well executed.