The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left with a New Preface

by Todd Gitlin

"The whole world is watching!" chanted the demonstrators in the Chicago streets in 1968, as the TV cameras beamed images of police cracking heads into homes everywhere. In this classic book, originally published in 1980, acclaimed media critic Todd Gitlin first scrutinizes major news coverage in the early days of the antiwar movement. Drawing on his own experiences (he was president of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1963-64) and on interviews with key activists and news reporters, he shows in detail how the media first ignore new political developments, then select and emphasize aspects of the story that treat movements as oddities. He then demonstrates how the media glare made leaders into celebrities and estranged them from their movement base; how it inflated the importance of revolutionary rhetoric, destabilizing the movement, then promoted "moderate" alternatives--all the while spreading the antiwar message. Finally, Gitlin draws together a theory of news coverage as a form of anti-democratic social management--which he sees at work also in media treatment of the anti-nuclear and other later movements.

Updated for 2003 with a new preface, The Whole World Is Watching is a subtle and sensitive book, true to the passions and ironic reversals of its subject, and filled with provocative insights that apply to the media's relationship with all activist movements.

Genres: History, Sociology, Nonfiction, Journalism, Politics, School, Academia

335 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

Todd Gitlin was an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and not very private intellectual. He was professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having not known much about the New Left beyond being familiar with Marcuse, I was hoping this would shine some light on it. Basically what I took from this book is that it was a rather unorganized conglomeration of student groups which the media made out to look like buffoons. What efforts they actually did make to slow down the war effort, Gitlin only mentions briefly to focus on the failures and incompetency among the group. I don't really have a clear perception of whether this was a success or an utter failure. Analyzing how the media treated their work should be beneficial but Gitlin's reliance on a conception of hegemony with the pessimism of Adorno makes his account seem unfruitful beyond what to avoid which is basically celebrity leaders and militancy. A very important notion in this book which didn't get highlighted so much is recognizing a revolutionary window and when there is no opportunity available. Militant Leninists had no shot whatsoever in overthrowing the goverment fifty years ago yet their delusions of grandeur let them to setting off bombs and wreaking havoc, essentially justifying the repression of the whole movement. I'm not opposed to violence in politics yet there's a degree to which it must be fruitful in order to be justified and it simply wasn't in the '70s.

[Chris Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

To some degree, the lessons of this book have been institutionalized more by political activists than they have by researchers on the media; every semi-aware individual attending a protest today is aware of the manner in which the media "frames," distorts, and marginalizes mass action.

On the other hand, the book is almost "too good"-- having served as the textbook case of the relationship between the media and a social movement for more than 25 years, one wonders if a changing media environment has altered the world it describes.

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

A piercing study (if somewhat set & academic) of the relationship between media institutions and New Left organizations as an example of Gramsican hegemony in action.

“A strategically minded political movement can not afford to substitute the commodity process of news, fashion, and image for a grasp of its own situation, a suitable organizational form, and a working knowledge of social conditions, structures, and interests.”

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisited this classic for obvious reasons.

[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gitlin's findings here match many trends that I've come across in my preliminary research on how the mass media and the New Left interacted in Japan. Although his office resides in Columbia University's journalism department, he recognizes an almost Lukacsian inability of journalists to see outside their own reified, bourgeois 'media frame.'

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

explains the role of the media during an intense period of
social change...brilliant

[Caroline Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amen brother. Also totally depressing.

[Alex Waltz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Argument was that media helped shape the New Left movement, particularly the SDS. Written by Gatlin, who was a participant in the events.