Summary: The Bush administration marketed and sold the war in Iraq to the American people. How and why did the press buy it, and what does that say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda? In this program, veteran journalist Bill Moyers, award-winning producer Kathleen Hughes, and their investigative team piece together the reporting and political spin that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1911, the first newsreels flickered in America's nickelodeons. In the mid-1960s, they vanished from movie theaters as nightly television newscasts came to dominate visual journalism. In between, newsreels grew into a unique 20th-century institution that informed and entertained whole generations. In this program, Bill Moyers conducts a tour of the cultural and political landscape so...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: As this Bill Moyers program makes clear, television became another member of the family in the 1960s, both reflecting and influencing the era. The times were chaotic and TV whirled us into that chaos while also holding up a mirror to it: the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landing, the saga of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In this classic program, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, just 32 years old, gives a guided tour of the newly redecorated White House. Jointly produced and broadcast by NBC and CBS, this program aired on Valentine's Day, 1962. One of the most popular newscasts in all of television history! President John F. Kennedy makes a brief appearance.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: When it comes to today's important public policy issues, the opportunity to be heard depends on whether you can afford it. In this program, Bill Moyers and key legal and public interest advocates examine how industries with deep pockets use their access to the media to overwhelm the public debate, from North Carolina's hog industry to the defeat of the McCain Tobacco Bill to the passage of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Some stories are simply too good to be true. In this program, John Kampfner, political editor for the New Statesman (London), skewers heroic reports of the ambush, capture, and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, calling them misrepresentations designed to bolster wavering support for the Iraq War. Kampfner also scrutinizes the controversial practice of embedding members of the news media in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The growth of mass communication provided a new understanding of ways to manipulate images and influence popular opinion, giving birth to the concept of public relations. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the public-relations campaign designed by Ivy Lee in 1914 to improve the image of John D. Rockefeller. He also talks with Edward Bernays-the man who helped immortalize Thomas Edison and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1984
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Summary: This program examines the power of professional pollsters to influence public opinion. Public opinion pollsters and market researchers serve virtually every facet of American culture. Nearly everyone-from the makers of cake mix to television executives and candidates for public office-seeks to become the intimate of our private opinions for the purposes of their own strategies. In the hands of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at the impact of the visual image on news and politics in the electing of Presidents and the governing of America. While projecting a self-serving image has long been an understandable part of American politics, the 1980s produced a marriage of sophisticated news manipulation by political candidates and a willingness of the news media to dance to the candidate's tune. To what...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: No single force has changed American politics more than television-especially the television commercial. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the phenomenon of the "30-second president" and the role of advertising in 20th-century American politics. The video features an interview with Rosser Reeves, an advertising executive who worked on early political television campaigns for Dwight D....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This program looks at a society inundated with visual images. From billboards to bus stops, from rock videos to newsstands, mass-produced images have become the very air we breathe. What is this cultural atmosphere saying to us and about us? Why should we care? Ever since the pioneers of public relations and advertising spoke about the "engineering of consent," social critics have analyzed its...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The public mind is often deceived by those who manipulate it, and it deceives itself, as well. This program examines how deception has influenced some of the major events of our recent past and how self-deception shapes our personal lives and the public mind. Why do trusted people in public life lie to us and to themselves? Can a society die from too many lies? Do our institutions demand...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Beginning in 1935, a group of New Deal-sponsored photographers roamed the American landscape, capturing the human face of the Great Depression. This film tells the story of the mammoth project, supervised by Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration and later made part of the Office of War Information. Viewers will encounter the poignant, iconic images and personal challenges of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The development of authentic self-esteem and a healthy sense of self has always been a vitally important part of growing up. But this process is a challenge that has gotten even trickier to negotiate due to the widespread integration of digital technology into everyday living. Drawing on the insights of a clinical psychologist/family therapist, an adolescent psychologist, and a number of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Out of the tradition of the great 19th-century European trade exhibitions came a 20th-century American phenomenon, one that provided recreation, inspiration, and what amounted to a cultural barometer-the World's Fair. At the time this classic program was produced, the United States had hosted nine of them, from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the sprawling 1982 celebration in Knoxville,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: There's a fine art to selling earlobe lifts, inflatable massage boots, and mini-staircases for arthritic dogs. This ABC News program enters the strange world of A. J. Kubani and his New Jersey-based company, Telebrands-a purveyor of quirky household products showcased in late-night TV infomercials. In a one-on-one interview, Kubani discusses his main strategy: identifying a mundane, irksome...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Perhaps the best example of paparazzi-aided self-promotion, Paris Hilton has almost single-handedly refocused Big Media's editorial priorities. This program studies the cultural and technological forces that have shaped the modern tabloid industry and propelled Hilton's bizarre ascent to worldwide stardom. Experts featured in the program include celebrity photographer Jeff Vespa, media...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: No sooner had Europe declared an end to its Great War than the seeds of new conflict were sewn-in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. With typical global awareness, photography patron and archivist Albert Kahn chose to document the historic changes occurring in the colonial Middle East. This program traces his team's expeditions into Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine as Western powers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Tapping phone calls, paying informers, planting microphones, trespassing, purchasing information obtained illegally: it's all in a day's work for the paparazzi. Filmed in England, France, and Italy, this program introduces viewers to unscrupulous photographers prepared to go to practically any length to shoot celebrities and politicians unaware-including Antonio Zappadu, the man responsible for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Sixties' media philosopher Marshall McLuhan predicted the coming of a Global Village in which telecommunications technology would figuratively shrink the world. Satellites, the Internet, multinational communications giants, and the ubiquity of televisions and computers have more than helped realize his prophecy. Who are the big players and what kind of village have they wrought? As American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: As globalization of trade rapidly expands, the mainstream media is being accused of inadequately reporting the issues. This program canvasses some of the dissent by exploring conflicts of interest within the media and showing how technology, such as the camcorder and the Internet, is challenging the monopoly of big news broadcasters. Differences between mainstream and "indie" media are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Those who stand outside our culture often view it with a lens made more accurate by distance and perspective. An Englishman on intimate terms with America, film producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields ) sees in our movies the reflection of a nation at odds with itself. In this age of the visual image, popular culture can make attractive the vice or virtue that politics...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Soviet film studios worked hard to portray their government's system as idyllic and forward-looking. This program showcases animated films designed to promote that utopian vision. Soviet Toys, the earliest known example of Soviet animation, condemns Lenin's New Economic Policy; The Victorious Destination celebrates the achievements of Stalin's first five-year plan; Samoyed Boy praises the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006