16
“The Whole World is Watching: The Media and the Unmaking of the New Left” Todd Gitlin
“The Whole World is Watching: The Media and the Unmaking of
the New Left”
Todd Gitlin
SDS and Framing
Factors Shaping Media Framing
1) Cover events, not causes2) Person, not groups3) Conflict, not consensus
Norms of Covering Deviant Behavior: Crime StorySM is treated as a collective criminal act.
SDS and the Media
Media and SDS: Media Actively Engaged SDS (302)
Engaged: Use Media to Promote Anti-War message
Disengage: Is it an option?
SDS: Changes in Membership
Prairie Power v. Old Guard: Differences
Old Guard: NE, Ivy League, more intell., longer history
of activism
Prairie Power: Mid-west, younger, state universities,
newer to radicalism
Media and SplitThe media, rather than SDS itself, began to define the
group to its own disparate offices and chapters.
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Celebrity as Career: Performing: Jerry Rubin (303)
1) Appearance Before HUAC Rubin as a Political Figure: Leaders without a RealFollowing He was driven to the media when his own base abandoned
him: His ego took over.
YIP: Youth International PartyIt was a much a media fiction, or creation than a political movement. In 1968, they nominated a pig.
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Chicago Seven: Court as Circus
Why Did The Press Follow Rubin and Hoffman?Answer: “They were colorful and symbolic…”
Rubin: Political TheoryRubin had a theory of revolution. He believed his “self-
dramatizations, and the spectacular events they accompanied, mobilized oppositional consciousness and revolutionary action.”
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Replicated Media Own Methodology: Turn Audience into Whatever is Being Portrayed
Chicago as Myth: Images of New Left Defiance It was copied in other cities, everyone wanted to be part of the media image of Chicago. New Left of late 1960s and 1970s informed by media images of FSM, SDS.
Example: SLA
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Replicated Media Own Methodology: Turn Audience into Whatever is Being Portrayed
Chicago as Myth: Images of New Left Defiance It was copied in other cities, everyone wanted to be part of the media image of Chicago. New Left of late 1960s and 1970s informed by media images of FSM, SDS.
Example: SLA
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Replicated Media Own Methodology: Turn Audience into Whatever is Being Portrayed
Chicago as Myth: Images of New Left Defiance It was copied in other cities, everyone wanted to be part of the media image of Chicago. New Left of late 1960s and 1970s informed by media images of FSM, SDS.
Example: SLA
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Celebrity as Trap: Abdicating (307)Leaders abdicated, because they found themselves caught
between being an activist/spokesperson and a celebrity.
Examples:Mario SavioBob Moses
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Celebrity as Trap: Abdicating (307)Leaders abdicated, because they found themselves caught
between being an activist/spokesperson and a celebrity.
Examples:Mario SavioBob Moses
Celebrity as Career or Strategy
Alternatives for Leadership: (308)Structural weaknesses of the New Left prevented the
movement from being able to tactically handle the media.
SM with more coherent policies, have less free flying
leaders.
Implications for Movements
Implications for Movements (308)How should or can SM deal with nexus of media and
corporate interests?
Hegemony: How are SM Co-Opted?
Environmental and Consumer Rights Groups
Media and ActivismActivists have become stock characters.
Implications for Movements
Summary: Analysis of SDSBecame dependent on Media Because:
1) It had a narrow social base: students2) Had a broader policy goal: end the war
Implications for Movements
Implications for Movements (308)How should or can SM deal with nexus of media and
corporate interests?
Hegemony: How are SM Co-Opted?
Environmental and Consumer Rights Groups
Media and ActivismActivists have become stock characters.
Chicago: 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l4n5uw_GFM&feature=related
