The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Paperback)

by Todd Gitlin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Gitlin tells us . . . how The New York Times and CBS reported on Students for a Democratic Society, and how their choices mattered for the development of the 60s movement and the containment of serious political change. -- In These Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 341 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (October 15, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520040244
• ISBN-13: 978-0520040243
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,051,367 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars SDS and the Media, May 9, 2002

By	Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"The Whole World is Watching," is Todd Gitlin's doctoral dissertation modified for publication. Gitlin was president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the early 1960's before moving on to other radical causes. Gitlin was educated at Harvard and is currently (I think) a professor at NYU in media studies and journalism. This book deals with the influence of the media on SDS during the 1960's. He's written other works on media studies as well an epic history of the 1960's. Gitlin is definitely the intellectual, and it shows in this book.

In "The Whole World is Watching," Gitlin argues that the theory of hegemony as articulated by Antonio Gramsci can be applied to the media and its operations. Gitlin argues that the media is a tool of the corporate liberal apparatus and that the media acts as a sort of "middle-man" between elites and the masses. The media controls and directs how people think by using "frames." These frames limit the parameters in which discourse can take place in the public sphere. Frames can and do change, however, as elites change their opinions. Gitlin uses SDS as a test case for his theory. He argues that SDS, once it came to media attention in 1965, was framed by the media as an anti-war group, totally ignoring all of the other things SDS stood for (participatory democracy, etc.). This frame attracted thousands of people who joined SDS without any knowledge of what SDS was all about. This influx of people ended up changing the group for the worse, and SDS died a painful death several years later due to sectarian Marxist wackos.

Along the way, Gitlin looks at various other traits of the media. For me, the most important was his examination of how media creates celebrity. This treatment is particularly important in relation to SDS because it contributed to its downfall. Gitlin shows how SDS's schizophrenic attitudes toward leadership (where organization was needed and advocated by some but opposed by those who hated hierarchy) allowed the media to create harmful divisions. The media tends to profile only the people who are photogenic or those who make good copy. Unfortunately for SDS, these were usually not the best qualified or most stable people. Those that got the attention parlayed their success into monetary gains, alienating other people in the organization. Mark Rudd comes to mind as one who best personifies this problem. Rudd, who sported a comb over that would make Senator Carl Levin jealous, went on to fame and glory with the Weatherman organization. His claims to media celebrity went so deep that when he turned himself in to the authorities in 1977, reporters turned out in droves for what turned out to be a non-event. What is important here is that the media concentrate on image over substance. This can be very harmful to an organization with serious issues to debate.

Gitlin ends his dissertation with a critique of the sources he used for his research. Gitlin was only able to peruse the CBS archives, as ABC didn't have any and NBC wouldn't let him look at theirs. The other main media source for the dissertation was the New York Times. Despite the limited scope of his sources, I think Gitlin has gone a long way towards exposing the hypocrisy any right thinking person knows exists in our media systems. Gitlin even goes so far as to imply that the 1968 Democratic Convention fiasco in Chicago was a media creation. For anyone interested in media studies, this book is a must have.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Television and Journalistic Objectivity, January 25, 2002

By	A O Cazola (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

Todd Gitlin is a media crtic extraordinaire. His teachings in journalism and media departments across North America are unmatched, and he is well-known as a writer on Salon.

The Whole World is Watching is an indepth and scholarly look at how the media portrayed left-leaning student protest in New York and Washington in the 1960s. The words that the New York Times used to describe the protests were as important as the amount of ink they received. Gitlin demonstrates how the coverage the student protests received in the mainstream media determined how the general public perceived their cause.

Gitlin is an excellent writer and The Whole World is Watching is highly researched and well executed.