Citation

Blondheim M, Liebes T. Ann. Am. Acad. Polit. Soc. Sci. 2009; 625(1): 182-195.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0002716209338574

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The golden age of television news gave a large majority of otherwise diverse Americans a unified, seamless, and clear-cut image of their nation, its central players, and its agenda. Carefully scheduled, edited, sequenced, and branded, heard and seen simultaneously across America, it provided a pretense of order to the chaos that is news. The permanence and stability of the nation, as expressed in a complex way by TV news, provided Americans with an all-important sense of existential security experienced on an unarticulated emotional level. Today, a disjointed news environment is crushing the nature of network news as a transitional object. Television news no longer reassures viewers by connecting them to a surmountable world out there but carries them on a loop from themselves to themselves.