Sur Smithsonian

 

Quand l’écrivain Upton Sinclair s’est lancé en campagne électorale pour devenir gouverneur socialiste de la Californie, les nouveaux médias ont été embrigadés à coup de mililions de dollars pour le battre.

With the election just weeks away and with the Democratic candidate poised to make his surging socialist agenda a reality, business interests across the country suddenly began pouring millions of dollars into a concerted effort to defeat him. The newspapers pounced, too, with an unending barrage of negative coverage. By the time the attack ads finally reached the screens, in the new medium of staged newsreels, millions of viewers simply did not know what to believe anymore. Although the election was closer than the polls had suggested, Upton Sinclair decisively lost the 1934 race for the governorship of California.