how has television reflected and changed american history since 1950
How has Television reflected and affected America since 1950 ? Since 1950 television has been one of the most influential mediums on American culture. It has provided America with news, entertainment and advertising. Television’s great popularity in American culture has caused it to reflect and impact American society. Television has affected the American nation with features such as groundbreaking journalism and programming, that have broadened Americans’ minds by informing them about events that greatly shaped our nation, like the civil rights movement and the AIDS epidemic. And it has reflected American society by presenting characters and situations in its programming that mirror American culture. In opposition television has had corrupting effects on the American view and it has constantly been criticized for giving the American people the wrong information through its programming and on its news. Many politicians have used their television appearances in calculative ways by emphasizing their appearances and sometimes stage managing the news, the network news executives have been increasingly drawn from the business community and not the journalism community, and all of our major news channels (CNN, MSNBC etc) have been sued for libel. Our programming has also offered false depictions of American society; various minorities have sued television shows for insulting their culture. With this knowledge we are prone to ask ourselves how did the television programs that we all watched religiously affected us? ... How has television shaped your view on the world around you? Television broadcasting was established in the 1920’s but it would not become an important part of American culture until 1946 because of reasons like technical difficulties and WWII. Television fully became a part of American society between 1949 and 1953 when the number of television sets escalated from 940,000 to 20 million sets. A very popular theme aborted in television during the 1950s has been the presentation of the American family. The 1950’s were characterized by the baby boom, the American dream, and a home life with a wife and children . At the time television was considered a family activity, therefore most of the programs of this period presented the family ideals. The American family was presented with some diversity: there were families from rural, suburban and city areas, immigrant families like the Swedish family on Mama, and a Jewish family in The Goldbergs . Most of the families though, like American society at the time, were married couples with children. Although it may seem now though that television in the 1950’s correctly illustrated American society at the time in many ways it did not. ... Moreover, the programming was often used in manipulative ways; like the program I led three lives, in which the purpose of the show was to bring “why we fight communism” patriotism to the American household by telling the story of communists who invaded American families and spoiled American youth during the time of McCarthyism and the Cold War.