Television Shows

Iran ... has not sought nuclear weapons ... Have you heard that from Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, Wolf Blitzer or Fareed Zakaria of CNN, David Muir of ABC, Scott Pelley of CBS, or Shepard Smith, Chris Wallace, and Bret Baier of Fox News? No, you have not. Instead, they casually refer to "Iran's nuclear weapons program" as if it were an indisputable fact ... Joe Scarborough ... one-upped this reckless gang by asserting that Iran has "promised to get a nuclear weapon and then has promised to use the nuclear weapon to annihilate Israel." He then repeated this double lie.

This bleeding-heart libertarianism was the reason for the enormous success of the Little House saga that Roger MacBride advanced both through his involvement in the television series ... I remember Roger telling me of some of the [production] conflicts ... Roger insisted that the children run around in bare feet, which would have been historically accurate, while Michael Landon insisted that the children wear shoes, since the television audience, not knowing the circumstances involved, would have thought that the parents were neglecting their children if they didn't provide them with shoes.

Even into the 1960s, television series continued to portray those in business as 'good guys'. Westerns were one surprising source of positive images about business: Remember that Ben Cartwright of 'Bonanza' ran a sprawling ranching and mining empire on the family's 1,000-acre Ponderosa estate? ... the percentage of big business characters portrayed as villains rose from 31 percent before 1965 to 58 percent afterward. The authors compared, for example, the positive portrayals of the Cartwright family in 'Bonanza' to the largely corrupt and immoral Ewing family of 'Dallas.'

Politics, and presidential politics most especially, is little more than theater ... Just watch the television coverage. The focus is on the horserace aspect process. Anything resembling an idea is just a way to distinguish one horse from another. Themes are little more than gimmicks. One candidate claims to be the straight talker. Another's heart bleeds ... (Do you believe that Hillary Clinton really wants to have a conversation with you?) ... This is all role playing, and it's designed to achieve one thing: power. Over you ... How could campaigning be anything else but show biz?

Television consists of bland programs and distorted news. Radio and television channels have been nationalized for half a century by the federal government, which grants channels as a gift to privileged licensees, and can and does withdraw these gifts when a station displeases the government's Federal Communications Commission. How can any genuine freedom of speech or of the press exist under such conditions?

Free to Choose, according to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, became the best-selling nonfiction book of 1980. Sales were boosted by the ten-part companion television series on PBS. Each week viewers saw the congenial Friedman clearly explain why free markets serve individuals and society best, and why government creates chaos and poverty—all well illustrated with beautiful location footage, including scenes of Hong Kong's success. Four years later Friedman again combined a book with a television series in The Tyranny of the Status Quo, also co-written with Rose Friedman.

As we now know, ... the military-industrial complex is well represented in the daily television news coverage of the Iraq and Afghan occupations. Those former generals who seemed generously to have come out of retirement to provide disinterested analysis of the Bush administration's military adventures are neither generous nor disinterested ... As the Times put it, "Records ... show how the Bush administration has used its control ... in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks."

When Tommy Chong re-appeared in the television series That Seventies Show and in the marijuana classic Half-Baked, it was a triumphant return. He neither glorified the druggy life or condemned it; it was simply the endearing role of a character which he had always played, like the perpetually drunk Otis in the Andy Griffith Show a generation ago ... Face the future with grace and courage, Tommy. Your jail sentence will only add to the authenticity of the beloved character you have delighted us with for decades.

Well, think about how corrupt this system is, with the networks being full participants in it. Parading every night on television to the American people these ... retired military officers. There's a certain respect, maybe even awe ... And they'll be introduced as someone who's been highly decorated, fought in Vietnam, got one of the medals ... They always recite the credentials, so most people are saying, "Okay, this guy's probably giving me the straight scoop." The networks never let on that these guys had a vested interest and were just really mouthpieces for the administration.

Stossel: ... [W]e're all trying to be objective, but we all have points of view ... My most opinionated work falls between an op-ed piece and a news article. When I get too opinionated, they make me superimpose the word commentary over what I am saying.
Reason: When does that happen?
Stossel: On 20/20, it's assumed that the chats with Hugh [Downs] and Barbara [Walters] are commentary. But on "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?," for example, when I made the argument that regulation, by increasing poverty, was killing people, they made me superimpose the word commentary.

Reason: How did the network respond to pressure from the Church of Scientology about that episode?
Stone: They blew it off. To be fair, it wasn't really at the Comedy Central level. It was way up at the Viacom level. [Viacom owns Comedy Central.] It wasn't a choice or anything we had any say in. The only thing that we got was a phone call saying that the producers of Mission Impossible: 3 [which stars Cruise] want this show off the air ... But then we realized ... you can't just pull an episode off the air anymore. People are going to find out ... [I]t was all over the press. The Internet makes those backroom deals a lot harder to do.

[Carey's] self-titled television show, which airs ... on ABC, is beginning its third season ensconced in the Nielsen top 20 (and locked in a ratings war with NBC's Third Rock from the Sun) ... In his sitcom, which shares certain blue-collar affinities with shows such as Roseanne and Grace Under Fire, his character is an assistant personnel manager at a Cleveland department store. He is ... besieged on all sides by an indifferent employer, hostile co-workers, aimless friends, and a strong sense of his own inadequacy ... From this ..., Carey squeezes immense humor (and precious little sentimentality).

Janet Reno ... talked about how violence on television has an effect on violence in the real world. This is damn near a textbook definition of voodoo ... What she doesn't realize when she talks about getting rid of television violence ... is that violence in the arts is not a celebration of pain and suffering, but rather a celebration of health and life. One of the ways that we can ... channel that pain somewhere else, is that wonderful feeling we get by [experiencing all that vicariously]. At the end of [fictional violence], the victims are completely OK. It's the perfect insult to suffering and pain.