Leading Questions

• 1989 ----- color ----- 58 min ----- vhs
• (Public Mind: Image and Reality in America with Bill Moyers series, Part 2) Nearly everyone--from the makers of cake mix to network executives and candidates for high office--seeks to become the intimate of our private opinions. In the hands of campaign consultants, sophisticated techniques of market research become tools of political persuasion. "Leaders" find out what we think so they can tell us that's what they think, too. The public is soothed into feeling good instead of thinking critically. Techniques are designed to bring out the most emotional visuals with which to appeal to an increasingly indifferent society. Politics becomes a spectator sport instead of a participatory process, and the public "debate" becomes a meaningless theatrical "event."
• Topics: (Advertising, Communications, Political Science: American, Television)