Critics on the left and the right believed that television was slowly destroying the news by focusing attention on superficial and dramatic issues that didn’t provide information so much as entertain. In Sidney Lumet’s classic film Network, released in 1976, the veteran newsman Howard Beale learns that he is being pushed aside by the network where he has worked for years. Beale responds first by saying he will kill himself on one broadcast, and on the next he unleashes a fierce tirade—“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”—which viewers loved. The network bosses, led by programming executive Diana Christiansen, played by Faye Dunaway, want more. The Howard Beale Show, hosted by the “mad prophet of the airwaves,” becomes a smash hit. Dunaway’s character proves that she is willing to do almost anything for ratings.

Some of the most enduring films of the decade captured the mood that gripped the country. In his classic book, Raging Bulls, Easy Riders, Peter Biskind traces the history of the movie makers who rejected celebratory storylines in favor of the ugly truth. In The Godfather and The Godfather II, the villains were the heroes while the police and politicians could not be trusted. Productions such as The Exorcist exposed the demons that existed within America’s most intimate institutions—the home and the family. The New York City depicted in Taxi Driver was a landscape where every institution seemed broken.

Trust had eroded almost everywhere. Organized religion, the courts, labor unions, and public schools all saw their standing fall.