Iluzia necesară a (dez)informării

Abstract

The necessary illusion of (mis)information
"The launch of the miniseries “The Loudest Voice” (Tom McCarthy, Alex Metcalf) in the summer of 2019 draws the attention once again to the manipulative power of mass media. The production presented by Showtime in 2019 and taken over by HBO stirred an important interest, due to the subject it presents, namely the way in which in the mid-90s the Republican Roger Ailes built and consolidated on the American media market the Fox News television channel, through a radical approach, very politically engaged and, as later proved, immoral and sexist, toxic. The miniseries was produced at the same time as Ailes was accused, in 2016, of sexual abuse and harassment by former employees of the station, and at the time of his death, a year later, in 2017.
These two controversial topics attract the interest of the current world establishment, which offered the Golden Globe to Russell Crowe for his role in “The Loudest Voice“ and nominated Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie for the Oscars based on their performances in “Bombshell”, a film that also appeared in 2019 and dealt with the same subject, but from the perspective of the female colleagues harassed by Ailes.
Linking the ideas expressed by Noam Chomsky in the '80s and '90s and the way “The Loudest Voice” treats the illusion that the press often builds, I aim to follow the way the process of media manipulation is refined in time and becomes the main tool of the current political competition. It is extremely interesting the way in which, in just a few generations, the content of a debate no longer matters, but the performative act itself."