Fixing feminism: Women's liberation and the rhetoric of television documentary

On May 26, 1970, ABC broadcast the first television documentary treatment of the women's liberation movement. Part of a wave of media attention that second-wave feminism received in the spring of 1970, the documentary was produced and reported by Marlene Sanders, a reporter sympathetic to the movement who hoped that the documentary would correct its image problems. Three key rhetorical moves in the documentary form, framing, and refutation-are used to "fix" the movement, that is, to repair its radical image and to stabilize its meaning by inserting it into dominant narratives of social change derived from generic conventions of the television documentary, from a nostalgic vision of the civil rights movement, and from the media pragmatism favored by the liberal wing of women's liberation, which is shared by Sanders. The conclusion traces the implications of the documentary's rhetorical/ideological strategies for understanding how dominant media naturalize particular narratives about the Possibilities for and meanings of social change.