Network, Terrorism And The Media

Incredible Daughter #3 asked me yesterday what my 10 favorite movies are. I have a zero percent movie memory, so I cobbled together 10 that came to mind. One that didn't -- because it was made 30 years ago (!) and memory fogs -- was Network.

Uber-commenter Jim sent me a link that reminds me what a great movie Network was because like most great things, it remains relevant. Here's an excerpt:

Meanwhile, enter a young producer hungry for her shot at success:

"Diana: This is really terrific footage. We can get a movie of the week out of it, maybe even a series.

Man: A series? What are we talking about?

Diana: We've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals, the Ecumenical Liberation Army... who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747s, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage... hire writers to write a story behind that footage, and we've got a series.

Man II: A series about a bunch of bank-robbing guerrillas?

Barbara: What will we call it, the "Mao Tse-Tung Hour"?

Diana: Why not? They've got "Strike Force," "Task Force," "SWAT." Why not Che Guevara and his own little "Mod Squad?"

These words hung in the air for me. Are the hobgoblins not Hezbollah? Isn't this exactly what the media has been doing? SWAT, they have COPS now instead.

The full post is at Live from an Israeli Bunker and is worth reading. There's much more to the movie than "I'm mad as Hell ..." which is what most of us remember. It foretold the MSM sell-out to sensationalism, and what is more sensational than terrorism?

Related Tags: Network, MSM, Media bias, Terrorism