ANNA MCCARTHY. The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America.

Abstract

Much of the history of the formative years of television focuses on its relationship with consumerism, conformity, and suburban domesticity or its role in elevating and then derailing McCarthyism. Anna McCarthy takes a different approach. She joins a group of radio historians—Roland Marchand, William Bird, Nathan Godfried, Brian Ward, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, and Barbara Savage—who have explored how corporations and unions, as well as philanthropic, social reform, and policy groups, sought to use broadcasting to shape Americans' behavior, racial attitudes, and economic beliefs and their understanding of the meaning of citizenship, democracy, and freedom. According to McCarthy, these groups were engaging in an effort to govern by television, which she characterizes as a “technology of liberal rule” (p. 7). Television's proponents viewed it as an even more powerful force than print, radio, or film in training citizens about their rights and responsibilities in Cold War America, particularly the importance of moderation and balance “to counter the purported extremes of the past” (p. 16). With the exception of the chapter on DuPont, McCarthy is less interested in television's impact on audiences than in what it tells us about the political and economic goals of the program sponsors, whom she characterizes as members of the social and political postwar elite. However, she has difficulty at times in supporting this generalization.