The Made-for-TV Election

Directed by Joe Rothstein

Hollywood star and activist Martin Sheen shows how broadcast TV networks create winners and losers in US presidential elections by typecasting the candidates in a drama of their own making in this long-suppressed and sabotaged documentary about the 1980 Presidential Election Campaign when former Governor Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter. Watch how network news shows use polls, gaffes, flip-flops, stereotypes, and show business values to pump the ratings and misdirect you from what you need to know to be an informed citizen and understand what's really happening in America. The program dissects network coverage and reveals TV's "hidden hand" in changing the outcome of the most important election since 1968, exposing the myth of the Reagan Revolution and the made-for-TV "conservative tide" that so tragically changed America's course.