If there was ever an episode of Max Headroom which remained embedded in my brain through my life, it was this one. Originally titled “Election Day” and later “Grossberg’s Return” the big draw was Charles Rocket coming back as evil corporate Yuppie Ned Grossberg. He uses his guile and complete lack of ethics to usurp power at Network 66, a rival of Network 23, home of our good guys.
But through all of the political machinations around the ‘teledemocracy’ and its ratings-based election night, the key thread is best summarized here. It’s spoken by Theora Jones, in absolute horror:
“It’s sinister. The media is running events, not reporting them. Murry, they’re manufacturing their own truth.”
Talk about the shape of things to come…
During the episode, the Network 23 team gets a hot lead from a freelancer on a sex scandal involving Harriet Garth, the Channel 66 candidate. The video evidence is flimsy, grabbed from an open security camera, but the 23’s board is seeing 66 gain in the ratings. Edison refuses to participate in the hit piece, and they get a younger reporter, Angie, to take the bait.
Because that’s what it is – bait.
There’s a huge wave of sympathy for Garth, including personal testimonials from Network 66’s chair, and their ratings keep surging. Meanwhile, our team keeps trying to dig in and see what is really going on.
When the full footage is found – and Garth is seen on camera with a man, clear as day – they discover it was held back until it was advantageous for Network 66 to release it. And the whole thing? A set up from the start. Everything was manufactured to generate scandal and ratings.
Ned Grossberg sees the truth as an irrelevance. The end justifies the means – and in this case, the end is control over Network 66 and its resources.
The episode ends on a hopeful note, with voters switching channels to a third network, but can’t hide the threat underneath. If carried by enough voices, with the power of a network behind it, the truth can be manufactured and adjusted.
This episode came just as the Regan administration (nudged along by various conservative groups) killed the Fairness Doctrine. An FCC rule, it required TV and Radio stations to allow for equal time on controversial subjects. If someone came in and said, in an editorial or news piece, “Free bus trips are a steppingstone away from a Communist invasion” the station would have to allow a person with a differing opinion time to state, “It’s not, here’s what it will do.”
There were two other rules tied to the Fairness Doctrine. The “personal attack” rule applied when someone was subject to a personal attack during a broadcast. Stations had to let them know within a week of the attack, send them transcripts of what was said and offer the opportunity to respond on-the-air. The “political editorial” rule applied when a station aired endorsements for office. The unendorsed candidates were notified and allowed a reasonable opportunity to respond. When these rules were eliminated, conservative talk radio – unrestrained by any semblance of ‘fairness.’ Conservative talk radio was the immediate ancestor of folks like Alex Jones.
There were also changes in the rules about TV and Radio station ownerships. Once, you couldn’t own more than a certain number of stations in a single market. And if you were a foreign company (Say, like Rupert Murdoch’s enterprises) you were really limited. Guess who tanked those rules, and allowed groups like Sinclar Broadcast to own whole swaths of local media, dictating they read conservative dogma and disinformation?
“The Truth” brought down Nixon. And the response by great conservative think-tanks? “We need to manufacture our own truth. How do we do that?” Edison, Theora, and Max may have saved their city from Ned Grossburg, but we’ve invited him into our homes, given him the keys to our government, and cloned him. We live in a world where the truth is a commodity to be manufactured and sold.
Maybe, it’s time to rebel against a world run by Ned Grossbergs.
Biomechanoid Blues 