May 12, 2015
Theme 2: Ideologies, Opinions & Beliefs in Europe and the United States from the late-nineteenth century to the present May 12, 2015
Unit Introduction [Eduscol, Fiches Ressources]:
Knowing the history of religious beliefs, ideologies, and opinions is indispensable to understanding contemporary societies. This theme analyzes two domains that are closely integrated. It focuses on the place of religions with age-old origins and the formation of public opinion, which is inseparable from the principle of democracy and the societies that this principle underpins. Each key question is studied through the lens of case studies that illustrate the principal issues confronting Europe and the United States from 1890 to today. May 12, 2015
Chapter 1 – The Media and Public Opinion Chapter Introduction of Key Issues: “The Media and Public Opinion” chapter explores the relationship between two major domains of political and social life. It is not a question of reviewing the history of public opinion and the media, but rather to characterize their interactions in the framework of a democratic regime that experienced crises, one of which provoked the disappearance of the French Republic between 1940 and 1945.
The emergence of public opinion is inseparable from the advent of democracy. The model of a contemporary public opinion rooted in an essentially democratic public sphere emerged during the Enlightenment through the actions of the philosophes. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the triumph of public opinion was achieved through the recognition of individual and collective liberties.
For starters, public opinion is linked to the development of the media. It gained importance since the nineteenth century because the growth of the press opened a context favorable to contradictory debates that promoted the development of public opinion while also reflecting this opinion. The growth of diverse media in the twentieth century reinforced the importance of public opinion and confronted this opinion with new challenges. May 12, 2015
The history of relations between the media and public opinion belongs to the field of politics. During the Enlightenment and then during the nineteenth-century European revolutions the belief in a sovereign public opinion emerged. During the nineteenth century, governments and the people they governed invested the new sphere of public expression with newspapers to deploy the print media to spread political ideas. It became imperative for political powers to grasp the state of public opinion. In the 1930s the development of polls (by George Gallup in the United States) provided an improved means of gauging public opinion more precisely. Following the Second World War polling became part of the political sphere’s discourse and ended up appearing as the bell weather of public opinion. At the end of the twentieth century the diversification of free speech by citizens via the Internet called into question the concept of a unified public opinion as a means of collective expression, insofar as the public sphere online became a space for everyone to express himself or herself individually. May 12, 2015
Political crises provide a fertile field for simultaneously studying the role of the media in both the expression and the formation of public opinion. These crises generate debates that convey the confrontation of political forces and influence their outcome. Political authorities may be tempted to reinforce their use of the media and intensify their control of it. Over time the development of radio, television, the Internet and mobile telecommunications has lead to an explosion in the vehicles for the expression of opinion, which has also generated some concerns about the nature of democracy.
These include: • the risk of social disintegration, • of populist extremism, • of the growth of personal political power in which political leaders reach out to public opinion directly, • of an emotional democracy encouraged by media dramatization of issues. May 12, 2015
KEY TERMS
MEDIA PUBLIC OPINION opinion in a literal sense is the sum of the attitudes and mainstream ideas that prevail with respect to collective all means of publicly sharing issues (political, moral or information and culture with a philosophical). Public opinion is wide audience. Examples include formed by the collective group of print media (newspapers & individuals who share similar magazines), radio, cinema, attitudes. Public opinion plays a television, and the Internet. The decisive role in political regimes term is often used as "mass where power resides in national media." sovereignty because the public opinion is supposed to convey the will of the majority of citizens. May 12, 2015
Diagram: Interactions between Media, Public Opinion and Political Crises
Media Influence or Contest it.
Disseminates information or or Propaganda/ disinformation
May provoke or calm a crisis depending on info provided.
Mobilize people via media or censor the media.
Political Amplify or Attenuate a Political Crisis Public Crises Opinion Cause divisions or national unification
Complete the above diagram in your notes.
[Refer to handouts from Hatier/ Hachette manuals.] May 12, 2015
Political Crises
Defined by:
1) a rupture in democratic consensus. 2) a challenge to public institutions, including the government. 3) a confrontation between mainstream values and alternative perspectives. May 12, 2015
Case Studies: These specific case studies will highlight the critical issues and facilitate the analysis of the interactions of media and public opinion during major political crises in France. These crises are characterized by the rupture in democratic consensus or a challenge to democratic institutions or a contradiction of dominant values, and perhaps all of these aspects occurred simultaneously.
Analytical Questions:
1) What is the role of the media in the formation and expression of public opinion? 2) What is the impact of the political context on the changing relationship between public opinion and the media? 3) How has the state regulated the media at various points in history? May 12, 2015
AIM: Role of Media in France from Dreyfus to Vichy
KQ: 1) What is the role of the media in the formation and expression of public opinion? 2) What is the impact of the political context in the changing relationship between public opinion and the media? 3) How did the state regulate media?
Case Study: The Dreyfus Affair Case Study: 6 February 1934 Sources: Hachette & Hatier Manuals
II. AIM: Role of Media in France during mai ’68 Case Study: mai ’68 HW: Reread Gildea, 24-30; 50-53; 60-64. May 12, 2015
1. Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906) is the first case study of the interactions between media and public opinion.
The establishment of a republican culture was accompanied by the essential advent of the liberty of the press (Laws of 1881 and 1889). At the same time, technical innovations favored the development of the press and permitted a decrease in the price of newspapers. It amounted to a media and civic revolution: henceforth, citizens possessed the means to read the newspaper to develop their opinion and participate in democratic debates. The press gained a mediating role between the citizen, the state, and partisan political forces. Emboldened by improved information gathering and a professional journalistic corps, the press became the privileged instrument of political and social communication. Ideological debates played an essential role in the success of a newspaper. The Dreyfus Affair is a perfect illustration: it was an archetype of a press war and permitted two polarized camps to confront one another through editorials, articles, surveys, and images. The case study demonstrates how the Affair led to a bipolarization of public opinion through the engagement of intellectuals who like the press assumed a new position in political and social life. May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
2. Crisis of February 6, 1934 enables the analysis of the respective influence of a power press and of the radio, a new medium, that became a source of information for nearly half of French citizens during the 1930s.
The press remained the locus for the expression of ideological debates. Popular newspapers exploited political and financial scandals in the 1930s and played a major role in the increasing defiance of public opinion vis-à-vis politicians. The politicization of newspapers intensified. Humanité (official newspaper of the Communist Party) doubled its circulation between 1930 and 1939. The right-wing press attacked the Radical Party and the parliamentary regime following the Stavisky Affair. Radicals in power expressed their point of view through a powerful national daily newspaper (L’oeuvre) and regional papers (Progrès de Lyon, La Dépêche). On 6 February 1934 the papers reflected the violence of the political divisions in public opinion. Conservative newspapers, along with Humanité, played a role in the resignation of Prime Minister Daladier February 7. May 12, 2015
Newspaper Headlines from the Left and the Extreme Right, February 1934 May 12, 2015
KQ: How does this document illustrate the political crisis of 1934? May 12, 2015
On the other hand, information broadcast on the radio was strictly controlled by the state. Radio broadcasts regarding the events of 6 February 1934 demonstrated the power of the state. On the night of clashes the state- controlled radio network waited for the end of an opera broadcast before it transmitted a message from the Minister of the Interior. Radio Paris presented the protestors as “those in contempt of the law.” Using the “fascist threat” as justification, the national unity government, then the Popular Front reinforced state control over the radio. A large bureaucracy was created and placed under the direct authority of the Prime Minister. Right-wing newspapers subsequently took aim at the government’s radio propaganda by denouncing the TSFIO (conflation of TSF [Télégraphe San Fil] and SFIO [Section française de l’internationale ouvrière = Socialist Party]). See: http://www.radiosanciennes.com/ May 12, 2015
3. Mai ’68 constituted a social turning point by revealing a fractured public opinion that was volatile and sensitive to the highly criticized but still powerful media. Criticism of the media accompanied critiques of Gaullist society.
In the complex media landscape of 1967, (flourishing press whose hostility irritated President De Gaulle, large, privately listening radio audiences, and the growing popularity of television) Guy Debord published the manifesto of the Situationists, La Société du Spectacle. In it he denounced communication that had become a tool used to alienate the population. The programming and its state control of audio-visual media was contested. A desire for free self-expression consistent with the social and moral transformations of the 1960s directly challenged the state monopoly over the airwaves. To those who were fighting the system, the media were vassals of the state and the dominant classes while acting as the agents of the consumer society. May 12, 2015
KQ: What bias can be perceived in this report? KQ2: What might explain this bias? May 12, 2015
In 1968, information (news) first was transmitted via radio, which created ties between different factions of a chaotic public opinion. Transistor radios were carried on strike picket lines, in occupied universities and factories, in protests and during riots. Public radio covered events in a distant and different manner than alternative radio stations preferred by listeners. President De Gaulle deliberately chose to only broadcast his May 30 speech via the radio. By returning to the medium that had established his earlier popularity (June 18, 1940), he was able to change public opinion. The protestors of May ’68 were deeply impregnated by written culture; therefore, they preferred an alternative press and the use of posters, such as those from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Television ignored the events until May 10,when it finally joined the movement. On Friday, May 24 at 8PM radio and television broadcast General De Gaulle’s first speech, which was widely criticized. The refusal of the ORTF (public authority overseeing television) to broadcast the reactions of politicians and labor leaders to the head of state’s speech led to a major strike by many journalists from television news media. This strike continued even when the wider protest movement died down. The demands of the journalists on strike concerned the freedom of expression. This long conflict concluded with severe sanctions for protestors and reinforced state control over public radio and television. May 12, 2015
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 829 May 12, 2015
KQ: What newfound liberties does this report convey? May 12, 2015
Exposé Rubric based on the OIB Oral Exam 1. Understanding of the topic/ case study. Ability to situate it in historical context. 2. Mastery of individuals, facts, events, dates. DEEDs (Dates, Evidence, Examples, Documents) 3. Understanding of the theme's analytical questions and ability to contextualize the topic within the curriculum studied Ability to apply the analytical diagram of interactions to the case study.
4. Clarity of exposé & ability to respond to follow-up questions May 12, 2015
AIM: Role of Media in the US during the Vietnam War
KQ: 1) What was the role of the media in the formation and expression of public opinion in America during the Vietnam War? 2) What were the Pentagon Papers? 3) To what extent did the events at Kent St. University resemble a “massacre”?
May 12, 2015
Vietnam War, 1954-1975 May 12, 2015
Wars in Vietnam: 1954: French Indochinese War Ends 1954: American direct engagement in Vietnam Begins May 12, 2015
A. Media & Public Opinion During President Johnson's Escalation of the War in Vietnam
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 827 May 12, 2015
VIDEO: 1) "VID Tet Offensive 1968" [3:12] "Vietnam War Tet Offensive" [2:40] KQ: How did the media impact the war in Vietnam? May 12, 2015
Turning Point in LBJ's War: Tet Offensive, January 31, 1968
> begins de-escalation of war and suspension of Rolling Thunder carpet bombing campaign after 3 years. > President Johnson began peace talks > Johnson decided not to run for reelection in March 1968.
·35,000 Communists died. ·4,000 Americans dead. ·US declared military victory ·South Vietnamese did not rise up en masse against their government. ·26% of Americans still approved of LBJ's conduct of the war. ·Gen. Westmoreland: "200,000 more troops were needed." ·500,000 American soldiers were already serving in Vietnam.
·CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite asked, "What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war!"
Source: William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey, (NY: Oxford U.P., 2007), 332. May 12, 2015
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 827 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
Eddie Adams Talks about the Photo of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing Viet Cong Prisoner Nguyen Van Lem in Saigoon in 1968 May 12, 2015
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 827 May 12, 2015
B. Media & Public Opinion during President Nixon's Prosecution of the War in Vietnam
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 851. May 12, 2015
See Chafe, 389-90.
Life, May 15, 1970 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
John Filo, "Mary Ann Vecchio," May 4, 1970. "VID Vietnam War Photos" These events inspired Neil Young to write the song "Ohio". Listen & analyze his lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs6aaaJBAv0&list=RD9GXtQfXBAmM May 12, 2015
LYRICS: Ten soldiers and Nixons comin, were finally all alone. This summer I hear the drummin, 4 dead in Ohio. Gotta get down to it, Soldiers are cutting us down, should have been done long ago. What if you knew her and found her dead on the the ground, How can you run when you know. Gotta get down to it, Soldiers are cutting us down, should have been done long ago. What if you knew her and found her dead on the the ground, How can you run when you know. Ten soldiers and Nixons comin, were finally all alone. This summer I hear the drummin, 4 dead in Ohio. 4 dead in Ohio 4 dead in Ohio May 12, 2015
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 851. May 12, 2015
Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) On August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that two days earlier, U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. Johnson dispatched U.S. planes against the attackers and asked Congress to pass a resolution to support his actions. The joint resolution “to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia” passed on August 7, with only two Senators (Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening) dissenting, and became the subject of great political controversy in the course of the undeclared war that followed. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution stated that “Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repeal any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent any further aggression.” As a result, President Johnson, and later President Nixon, relied on the resolution as the legal basis for their military policies in Vietnam. As public resistance to the war heightened, the resolution was repealed by Congress in January 1971. This joint resolution of Congress (H.J. RES 1145) dated August 7, 1964, gave President Lyndon Johnson authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam. May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
Pentagon Papers
On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a documentary history tracing the ultimately doomed involvement of the United States in a grinding war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia. They demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance. The Government sought and won a court order restraining further publication after three articles had appeared. Other newspapers then began publishing. They, too, were restrained, until finally, on June 30, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 6 to 3, that publication could resume. The fight over the top-secret papers, whose compilation had been ordered by Robert S. McNamara when he was Defense Secretary, became a pivotal moment in the ages-old struggle between the Government and the press. But few would have guessed at the time how much it would change the news media, how much it would change the public view of the news media and the Government and how little it would change the way the Government conducts its business. Opponents of the Vietnam war, including Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime hawk turned dove who played a key role in making the papers public, hoped that doing so might persuade President Richard M. Nixon to change his policy on Vietnam. It did not. Less than a year after publication, Haiphong Harbor was mined, and the war dragged on. The Pentagon Papers prompted the first attempt ever made by the Federal Government to impose a prior restraint on the press in the name of national security. In his new book, "The Day the Presses Stopped" (University of California Press), David Rudenstine argues that some of the papers (though not the ones printed) could indeed have compromised national security. May 12, 2015
Few if any of the main players in the drama share that view. But even if it is correct, that only makes the precedent stronger; the Constitution, in the Court's view, makes prior restraint impermissible even if there is some danger to national security. Victory emboldened the news media, and the contents of the Pentagon Papers themselves guaranteed, at least for the generation of journalists directly involved, that every Government utterance would be subject to skeptical (and too often cynical) scrutiny. The Nixon Administration responded by creating the Plumbers unit (so called because they were to deal with leaks like that of the papers). That step in turn led to the Watergate scandal and ultimately to Nixon's resignation. — R. W. Apple Jr., June 23, 1996
The Complete Pentagon Papers Online:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/2011_PENTAGON_PAPERS.html? ref=pentagonpapers May 12, 2015
Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting with the Past, Vol. 2, 14th Ed., p. 851. May 12, 2015
Taken June 8, 1972, this photograph earned AP war correspondent Huynh Cong Ut (known professionally as Nick Ut) the Pulitzer prize, and Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the 9-year old "napalm girl" in the center, became a great deal of attention around the world for many years. As an adult, Phúc was removed from her university and used as an anti-war symbol by the Vietnamese government. In 1982, she converted from her family's religion of Cao Dai to Christianity. Kim Phuc had spent 14 months recovering from her wounds and underwent 17 transplants and other operations. She became an anti-war symbol in the West. Vietnam had used her as an anti-American symbol before her defection to Canada in 1992. May 12, 2015
KQ: What enabled photographers to gain unprecedented access to the battlefield during the Vietnam War?
1. Malcolm Browne, "Quang Duc," June 11, 1963. 2. Eddie Adams, "Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan," 1968. [3:15] 3. Nick Ut, "Phan Thi Kim Phuc," June 8, 1972. [ 4. John Filo, "Mary Ann Vecchio," May 4, 1970. 5. Life, "The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam," June 27, 1969. May 12, 2015
In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that today, incredibly, remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it sparked debate and intensified a nation’s soul-searching more than 40 years ago. On the cover, a young man’s face — the very model of middle-America’s “boy next door” — along with 11 stark words: “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” Inside, across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed halfway around the world — in the words of the official announcement of their deaths — “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam.” May 12, 2015
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the public’s response was immediate, and visceral. Some readers expressed amazement, in light of the thousands of American deaths suffered in a war with no end in sight, that it took so long for LIFE to produce something as dramatic and pointed as “One Week’s Toll.” Others were outraged that the magazine was, as one reader saw it, “supporting the antiwar demonstrators who are traitors to this country.” Still others — perhaps the vast majority — were quietly and disconsolately devastated.
Source: www.life.time.com, http://life.time.com/history/faces-of-the-american- dead-in-vietnam-one-weeks-toll/#1 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
AIM: Role of Media in the US
KQ: 1) What was the impact of the media in the Lewinsky Affair? 2) How has the Internet become an important factor in shaping public opinion in political affairs?
HW: Read Brinkley, 859, 896, 904. Consult the president’s Facebook page. May 12, 2015
Time, August 10, 1998 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015 May 12, 2015
Conclusion:
The study of the interaction between media and public opinion may culminate with a mention of the “rampant” crisis in confidence in political leaders in France and the U.S. and the widespread critique of media since the 1990s with the emergence of an “opinion democracy.” Although France has not experienced a major crisis since May 1968, public opinion increasingly distrusts those institutions that are supposed to represent it. A political crisis is being fueled by disaffection for politics (attested by rising abstention rates during elections) and by the frequent questioning of the media, accused simultaneously of collusion with politicians and of submitting to economic interests. The emergence of an “opinion democracy” composed of surveys, opinion polls, and focus groups that aim to channel political action in a worrisome evolution that runs contrary to the representative model and contrary to the expression of the “general will” linked to universal suffrage. A consequence of the technological revolution (Internet) and from the popular desire for participation, this intervention of opinion engenders a period of instability in political life (French presidential elections of 2002 or the European referendum in 2005). May 12, 2015
In this context, the real influence of the media is a topic of debate. If television has a preponderant effect on other media and plays a decisive role in creating political events, these are facts acknowledged by all actors in political affairs. However, there are voices that underline the limits of the media’s influence by the very fact that there is a diversity of media and citizens also have access to foreign media outlets. Meanwhile media consumers are free to consult media that favor information that reinforces opinions forged through contact with their own reference group. Still another point of view defends an “opinion democracy” where the media play the role of revealing the state of public opinion and thereby influence political decisions. They situate this rising power of public opinion in a dynamic of increasing individual autonomy in contemporary societies.
Source: http://cache.media.eduscol.education.fr/file/lycee/41/5/ LyceeGT_Ressources_Hist_04_Th2_Q2_opinion_213415.pdf May 12, 2015