I have told this story before on FreeRepublic.
As a young believer in the Republican Party, I enthusiastically supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and made my way to the South Orange Arena in New Jersey to participate in a rally for Goldwater where he was to speak. On the way into the facility we observed many Goldwater supporters who could not get in for want of tickets. I'm returning home and turning on the local 11 o'clock news out of New York to be told what I had been seeing, I was stunned to see those supporters of Goldwater converted by the magic of television into opponents of Goldwater protesting his appearance.
I never forgot how easily and deftly the media could lie and in the process simply eviscerate a conservative. It did not help that the the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party was as least as vicious as Lyndon Johnson in collaborating with the media to abort what might be described as the tea party's spiritual birth.
I never forgot how easily and deftly the media could lie and in the process simply eviscerate a conservative.With only three TV networks it was easy to control and shape the "news". The coverage of the civil rights marches convinced the rest of that country the Faubus, Maddox, and Bull Conner were representative of the entire south, a prejuidice passed on and alive to this day.
The anti Goldwater commercial of the little girl picking daisies with a mushroom cloud in the back, IIRC, was broadcast only once as a paid commercial but was played repeatedly on prime time news. Nice tactic on several levels; plausabile deniability, "We immediately pulled the ad" cloaking themselves in the false virtue that has become their hallmark; huge campaign budget savings, prime time ads were very expensivee; and the lasting icon, GOP = Dr. Strangelove mad bombers.
Not too long ago, in a bourbon fueled discussion with friends, the subject of mass news presentations before the then new television medium arose. We realized that so much was derived from Movietone News played at the local theaters. We all had vivid memories of the siege of Dien Bien Phu from our pre-teen years. Before some of us even had TV's. And came the realization that the producers and editors of these news reels came from the left wing cadres that produced the WWII news and propaganda films.
Same as it ever was. Just finely honed.