4th Power
Excerpt from Network - 1976
"I do not need to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows they are bad. It's a new "depression."
Everyone without a job or afraid of losing their job [...] Banks are breaking. Clerks keep guns under boxes. Punks vandalizing on the streets.
No one anywhere seems to know what to do and there is no way to do that. We know that air is not enough for us to breathe and food is not enough to feed us.
We sat watching our TV while the presenter tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that were the way things should be!
We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They are going crazy. Everything is going crazy everywhere. So we do not leave the house anymore. We sit and live in a diminishing world."
The movie Network makes a severe and scathing criticism of the television ethics, the massification of the public, and the purely capitalist and unscrupulous mentality of the powerful behind the scenes of TV.
It discusses the role of mass media and the need for social control. It exposes the existing interests among business conglomerates who control the media, especially television.
It also criticizes the passive and blind acceptance of television content by the public - the public is able to believe that the "tube" is reality and life is unreal.
The idea of the fourth power emerged from the mid-19th century as a resource in the midst of democratic societies: a body responsible for overseeing the abuses of the three original powers (Legislative, Executive and Judiciary).
This power, represented by the press, would have to denounce violations of rights in democratic regimes - which occasionally does not happen - in which laws are voted "democratically" and governments are elected by universal suffrage.
For many years, the fourth power received the title of "voice of the voiceless" and its representatives suffered great retaliations by several segments, which did not prevent that it maintained as a strong balance in the social balance with the other powers.
The media, with its tools of reach and representativeness, would be "the eyes and ears" of humanity, the will and opinion of the people. In fact, the information disseminated by the fourth power is the means by which public opinion is expressed. Or was it the other way around?
The fourth power today is guided by a bundle of planetary economic and financial groups and global companies.
The media revolution groups a centralizing and sometimes totalitarian press, a press that already has autonomy and authority and controls the making of journalism, cinematography, and editorial as an endless tentacle. So how can a fourth power fail to reach and build a level public opinion?
The distrust of the people arises from the moment in which the contingency of information questions its authenticity.
The phenomenon is denominated by Ignacio Ramonet as a "democratic censorship". Contrary to what was thought, censorship is not a weapon exclusive to authoritarian regimes, which act by constant supervision and amputation of information.
The fourth power of the 21st century installs between free information and the spectator communicational obstacles composed of more and more information, the so-called "information bombardment", filled with new garments that distract attention and / or surface content in a species of "maneuver" so that the receiver does not perceive what other information is hidden and dissolved by "censorship".
In this way, the widespread receipt of numerous information limits access to information. This mechanism atrophies even the intellectual development of the "mass", blocking the way and building a truly formed and consistent public opinion.
The fourth power no longer represents - not in its entirety - the concept of controlling powers and guiding citizens. Through it now pass filters that are managed by private interests, amputating information, directing looks, undermining intellectual functioning, in a true democracy of make account.
Source
Original Title: Network
Running Time: 122 minutes
Year of Release (USA): 1976
Direction: Sidney Lumet
Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky
Production: Howard Gottfried
Music: Elliot Lawrence
Cinematographer: Owen Roizman
Production Design: Philip Rosenberg
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Edition: Alan Heim
Cast:
Faye Dunaway (Diana Christensen)
William Holden (Max Schumacher)
Peter Finch (Howard Beale)
Robert Duvall (Frank Hackett)