The Nation Of Mass Medi The United States During 1945-1974

The Nation of Mass Media

The US during 1945-1974 transitioned through a period of restlessness as the traditional and the uprising views divided the country. The ideal America of the 1950s suburbia left the new generation of Americans restless by the ever-changing world around them. An absolute identity crisis swept across the nation with middle-class Americans questioning their identity, the government, and society itself by a dynamic world. Indeed, the United States was in turmoil and unrest, yet the country remained a superpower and an economic powerhouse after World War II. The United States was still a giant but a restless one with internal struggles with identity. The media accelerated the “restlessness” across the country by broadcasting

The Hippie Movement allowed Americans to seek “joy and freedom” from the conformity of the “Establishment”("Youth: The Hippies"). According to Time Magazine, “They were dropouts from a way of life that to them seems wholly oriented toward work, status, and power. They want to be recognized”. Americans were tired of conformity of the past generation of raising a family in the suburbs and buying a house; they wished to discover more. The Hippie Movement created restlessness among Americans as it raised the question of their own identity. Individuals were unsure and confused about what it meant to be an American. They were tired of the Vietnam War and the Cold War; they just wanted to be happy. Moreover, the movement picked up steam when the media covered the Hippie Movement. Television helped facilitate the movement by reaching a new broader audience. By 1960, 52 million sets of TVs were in American house and individuals relied on television for information and amusement (Jordan). The massive media coverage of the Human Be-In event popularized the hippie culture throughout the United States (Bhaddock). The Hippie movement with the help of the media shook the giant by provoking Americans to question Suburbia and their own identities. Once people examined their own new identity, they questioned the

National television broadcasted “Bloody Sunday” of Selma where 48 million Americans saw the brutality of the police onto the protesters. People were horrified and bothered by the state of an upheaval of the country as protesters amassed for civil rights and police brutality continued. The media deliver the injustice of the American society directly to everyone's living room. Furthermore, John Lewis once said, “without television news coverage on the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings or a choir without a song”. The media’s coverage of Bloody Sunday had a substantial effect on the civil rights movement as it fueled the fire to protest against civil injustice. On March 15, eight days after watching the violence, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a bill to Congress that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("Civil Rights Marchers Attacked in Selma"). Americans were restless from the Civil Rights Movement as they witnessed injustice and they questioned traditional ideas racial discrimination of society. TV was the instrument that made people hear the