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CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
Montage of various REAGAN media events-White House Dinners, walk on the Great Wall of China, horseback riding, Ronnie and Nancy at Allied Cemetery in Normandy, etc.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S Sam DONALDSON
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
Clip of REAGAN giving a speech at NORMANDY landing site on D-DAY anniversary, 1984.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S Sam DONALDSON
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
Clip of REAGAN giving a speech at NORMANDY landing site on D-DAY anniversary, 1984.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S Sam DONALDSON, says he was always frustrated that DEAVER'S elaborate manipulations of public appearances didn't leave Reporters any room to work.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S DEAVER, says he wanted to "stay ahead of television" and not let REAGAN be put on the defensive by the media.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
Master 11515 Tape 1 CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT - Documentary on the history of Presidental Campaingns and the part that the media plays in American politics. 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S Leslie Stahl, anecdote about REAGAN'S 1984 campaign and a story she filed about it which accused REAGAN of deliberate misrepresentation in the media.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
DO NOT USE Leslie Stahl s edited piece on Ronald Reagan campaign with her voice over. Shots of REAGAN at various public appearances - Campaign speeches, meeting with FARMERS in the middle of a wheat field, at a picnic with elderly people, in a gym "working out", youthfully playing football on a beach. Stahl v.o.-REAGAN manipulates the media to show that he's not "the rich man's president" or "too old to be President". C/S Stahl, says that the White House is focusing all its attention on the media to capitalize not on Reagan's policy skills but to create a cult of personality around him.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S STAHL (1988), says that contrary to her expectation, the White House loved her piece because the pictures of REAGAN in the report did precisely what DEAVER intended, they overshadowed the substance of the report.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan at Para Olympics.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - Ronald Reagan.
C/S STAHL (1988), says that contrary to her expectation, the White House loved her piece because the pictures of REAGAN in the report did precisely what DEAVER intended, they overshadowed the substance of the report.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT 1988 Presidential Campaign - George HW Bush, Sr and Michael Dukakis.
Master 11515 Tape 1 CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT - Documentary on the history of Presidental Campaingns and the part that the media plays in American politics. 1988 Presidential Campaign - George HW Bush, Sr and Michael Dukakis. Brief shots of BUSH and DUKAKIS at Party Convention podiums. Clips of various manipulated public appearances. BUSH lifting up a granddaughter, DUKAKIS trying to shake the "soft on crime" label by shaking hands with two COPS, BUSH walking through a formation of soldiers, etc. V.O.-the campaign is substituting pretty pictures for substance. The approaching election raises the serious questions about what exactly we're getting with each candidate.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Host Bill Moyers introduces a panel discussion of the documentary. His commentary, contrary to the tone of the documentary, runs along the line that TV makes Americans more "aware" of political processes. He indroduces the panel.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Advertising analyst Barbara Lippert [Adweek] says that political ads try to sell, but that the REAGAN era obscured the distinction between the AD and the product; Political ads only really work if they are NEGATIVE [i.e. BUSH'S shameful, racist-pandering WILLIE HORTON ads]. She thinks people are beginning to understand that they are being manipulated.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Kathleen Jamieson, media scholar, says that Ads are forcing politicians to tailor all speeches to fit the soundbite structure of ads, it is inviting to fraud, deception, and falsehood, cites REAGAN'S use of images to create a false pitch that his policies have been good for groups like blacks and the poor. It's a tactic that is hard to refute or challenge with verbal commentary. Media Scholar Kathleen Jamieson says that through the Reagan Era, TV has eroded the national ability to hold complex, informed, reasoned discussion of politics. Voters' identities seem to be growing more rooted in manipulated images and myths in the media than in their thoughts about their own needs and beliefs.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Journalist Mark Hertsgaard says that journalism should fight the "tyranny of the visual", TV needs to be more critical in accepting images that are set up by the candidates or officials. Discusses how BUSH used the TV networks to attack DUKAKIS with images of polluted Boston Harbor, but the networks didn't also show images of ravaged forests and other pollution that occurred under Reagan. Says that the broadcast media need to overcome the pressures of advertisers and the mistaken notion that adversarial or critical coverage of a candidate is not "objective" [because simply spewing out the images provided by staged media events isn't "objective" either.] Journalist Mark Hertsgaard discusses the show-business aspect of TV, in which advertising and business pressures make information and critical analysis subservient to "pleasing the audience" with fuzzy human-interest pieces and entertaining images. The constraint of broadcast time is also a factor.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
British Journalist Harold Evans says it's remarkable how the TV networks simply accept images provided by parties or candidates and rebroadcast them - essentially doing the candidate's work of putting images high in drama but low in political substance out on the air. Discussion of the impact of TV and media on simplifying and lowering political thought and consciousness to the lowest common denominator. British Journalist Harold Evans says that the print media should highlight the shortcomings of the broadcast media. Generally, says the broadcast media just want to put on a show and regurgitate the engineered images that the candidates and the political parties give to them without offering any critical insight.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Host Bill Moyers asks if the politicians' goal of making people believe, the journalists' [avowed] goal of making people think can be served by the medium of Television, which exists primarily as entertainment. Lippert says 8 years of REAGAN have conditioned viewers to think that journalists are rude and self-aggrandizing, rather than responsible, if they puncture the bubble of perfection that surrounds a politician's image. Jamieson says that the short time spans of TV news don't allow, for example, showcasing of the general incoherence of a lengthy speech made by REAGAN since any 20 second bit viewed in isolation seems coherent. Attacks the premise that serious TV reporting won't attract viewers as a dangerous excuse for TV to cater to the lowest common denominator. Evans says there's no reason why TV can't get viewers for serious political analysis if it uses it's promotional machinery as it does for dramas and sitcoms. Lippert says that soundbites are unconducive to thinking.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Hertsgaard says that it's outrageous for politicians or TV to blame the public for "apathy" because the prevalence of fluff on TV is obviously serving the interests of Politicians and TV corporations. Discussion of whether "serious" programming can or should attain the ratings that sitcoms and "Dynasty" get.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Panel discussion on the impact of TV on Democracy. Evans says that beyond the dumbing down of information, TV ads cost so much money and require so many fat cat donations that the voters and citizens are alienated from the political process and their leaders. Moyers adds that the TV Corporations are the ones who profit from this. Discussion of TV generally, the decline of the American attention span. Discussion of can voters get enough information from television? Discussion of stratification between heavy seekers of information and casual receivers of information in American electorate.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Hertsgaard says that people like BUSH and QUAYLE are indicative of a sad development that candidates are no longer capable of improvising, and are not engaged enough with their ideals to speak without scripts and handlers. Discussion of FOCUS GROUP methods from the world of MARKETING to test POLITICAL SPEECHES, the dangers of scripting speeches to a lowest common denominator of appeal instead of conveying ideas, the inherent deceptiveness of politicians delivering speeches written by others as if they care passionately about the words. Discussion of the way TV makes candidates, like news anchors, all more similar than dissimilar-adherence to a formula of candidate appeal.
CAMPAIGN 88: PRIME TIME PRESIDENT
Discussion of how TV might better serve democracy. Jamieson says that the popularity of DEBATES indicates that extended debates on single topics would be a way for TV to get a large audience to watch substantive coverage. Evans compares TV coverage of American and British elections, advocates banning political advertisements in favor of free TV time for candidates.