The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Americans Have Not Been This Skeptical of the Media Since the '60s
from They Live!, one of the few ‘80s films that was skeptical of the media
Our current situation on the ground: Gen Z does not trust the mainstream legacy news media because it appears to be a mouthpiece for Israel. Some respected journalistic institutions, meanwhile, maintain that TikTok is a fountain of Chinese-funded antisemitic disinformation that our kids happily drink from. Threads and Instagram apparently suppress any pro-Palestinian viewpoints. Hollywood has never been more out of touch, with celebrity hot takes losing followers instead of gaining likes and the Marvel Cinematic Universe crumbling (in this dimension, anyway).
When was the last time we were this skeptical of the media? If you are a student of history (or are patient enough to read subheds) than you know that it hasn’t been this extreme since the ‘60s. This type of media skepticism — where everyone was an amateur media sleuth — was practically invented during the Vietnam era.
Media skepticism itself was around as long as there was media. In the ‘30s, many intellectuals were worried that the radio might create more Hitlers in the future. Mass media was increasingly eyed with suspicion by academic elites and some journalists. After WWII, for this reason, cointel psy-ops were born, in order to promote anti-fascist propaganda at every level of culture and media. In the ‘50s, the fear had turned from fascism to communism and Senator McCarthy rooted out suspected communists from Hollywood and journalism.
So what made the ‘60s different from what came before —and also what made it similar to now — was that the skepticism came from the people. When Americans in 1968 saw the Tet Offensive on TV, questions grew. Was the media lying about Kennedy? MLK? Aliens? Was the moon landing real? It didn’t get much better in the ‘70s, but this time the skepticism was two-pronged. As dope smoking J-school grads got jobs, trying to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, there was an increasing skepticism of the liberal news media from conservatives as well.
By the Reagan ‘80s, Americans wanted to feel good again. Arguably, that might be why some people really love the ‘80s. 1 It was the last time that Americans on the whole loved popular movies, TV and music, rarely questioning the news. Indeed, now you had 24 hour news with CNN. There were some notable exceptions though. John Carpenter’s 1988 cult classic They Live! was a cutting rejoinder to the consumerism-obsessed yuppie culture of the times. 2
From the ‘90s until the ‘10s, there was more media skepticism, but by then capitalist realism set in. The opposition was every bit as marketable and easy to sell, consume and digest as the pro-establishment stuff was. Oh, you didn’t like the Iraq War? Just smoke weed and listen to NPR.3 You hate capitalism? If so, The Wire will show you why you’re right to feel that way.
The turn began in 2020. Conservatives, always skeptical of the mainstream media, were certainly not enamored with the COVID hysteria. But there was an unexpected realignment. Alternative medicine hippie boomers, who at one point were looking at Vietnam and JFK with skeptical eyes, were now skeptical of the jab. The medical establishment, long unofficially conservative, had now pivoted to the Democrats. Socialist Bernie supporters were told to put aside their animus at the corrupt DNC and hold their nose for Biden, if only to defeat Trump. When Biden won, socialists like myself already wanted more. Unions multiplied and the antiwork movement grew. But most of the idpol left was still firmly in the Biden camp, suspicious of anyone who believed in conspiracy theories. Much of mainstream media, which was already echoing the online essentialist idpol left, continued to do so.
From the ‘00s till this year, if someone was skeptical of the mainstream media, there was a good chance that person was conservative. From ‘20 to just this past summer, you could also infer they were an anti-vaxxer. But October changed everything. Being against Biden and Netanyahu was no longer a fringe, socialist perspective. Now it is something that TikTok teens are regularly espousing. Not only is a New Left forming, but Biden is the new LBJ.
The ‘60s may have invented this type of media skepticism, but this decade is seeing it reach unprecedented levels. The ‘60s had Walter Cronkite, the most trusted name in news. The idea of anyone having that mantle nowadays is absurd. There isn’t even a Jon Stewart-level comedian who currently holds that scepter. In the ‘60s, there was shocking footage, but it wasn’t regularly reported to be fake. Nowadays, there are deepfakes from every angle. Or, as Naomi Klein said recently in Vanity Fair:
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen an information war like this,” Klein said later. “We have to check absolutely everything we’re seeing: hacked accounts, doctored screen grabs, you know, selectively edited AI. I mean, everybody I talk to is saying, I have never seen anything like this. And I think the tricky thing is, if it gets us to a point, and I think a lot of people are at a point of, ‘I don’t know what I can trust.’ Then just anything is possible, and in some ways, who wins when we can’t trust anything, right? I think the stronger party probably wins because you can just dismiss anything. ‘Well, what was that? You don’t believe that. I mean, we can’t believe anything.’”
And yet, it is in this very darkness, in this resistance to mainstream narratives, that great subcultures and cultural movements grow. This resistance to mainstream narratives in the ‘60s forced the media to change. The music of the ‘60s is best understood in the context of the surrounding tumult, much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show songs are best heard in a movie theater after midnight. Yes, today’s tumult has violence, antisemitism and Islamophobia, much like the ‘60s had violence and bigotry. All those beautiful songs and films, all that great Rolling Stone journalism, came out of that very despair. And we might have a renaissance of that mass consciousness again.
Who knows? We might actually land on the moon this time.
Also might explain why those same media-skeptical boomers that were the youth of the ‘60s hated the ‘80s
It was released 35 years ago today. Watch it. OBEY!
I did. One of the more shameful, least glamorous chapters of my past.
Skepticism if the media is well founded. What is probably unusual is no one seems to trust it. Although I'm sure I saw a recent poll where Democrats were more trusting than Republicans.
After covid it is doubtful they can recover. Plus the level of collusion with government and its agents, including intelligence organizations, is now widely known.
The mainstream just looks increasingly fake. It is too polished. Raw footage of riots, with shaky camera work and bad audio, simply looks more authentic.
“nothing is happy for them over whom terror always looms”