This dissertation examines televised representations of the Apollo missions to the Moon on CBS Evening News when the missions occurred, 1968 through 1972, then how the project has been remembered in more contemporary representations, 1973-2004. First it was necessary to examine the extent to which NASA’s public relations apparatus influenced the language of the network. Findings suggest that, while NASA did not dictate CBS’s reporting, there were strong mutual relationships between agency and network that kept reporting positive.
Second, using a rhetorical analysis methodology in the theoretical context of James Carey’s ritual view of mass communication, I argue that mediated representations of Apollo followed four distinctive rhetorical strategies to appeal to and convince Middle America to support the $25 billion dollar project. These strategies mirrored what Mark Byrnes found to be NASA’s rhetorical strategies: nationalism, romanticism, and pragmatism. An additional discursive pattern was identified: the glorification of American technology. On television, rhetoric of nationalism asserted the certainly of American success in winning the cold war along with images of Kennedy. Romantic metaphors burnished other rituals: space was an American frontier open to exploration by a cohort of heroes including rugged astronauts portrayed as cowboys, and self-made individualistic engineers. Pragmatic metaphors underlined the social, political, and economic utility of space exploration to justify the missions as the public began to question the necessity of additional trips to the Moon after Apollo 11. Narratives of technology underscored U.S. leadership in innovation while touting its organizational know-how and technological successes. An additional discovery was CBS’s use of binary oppositions necessary in news reporting that acted to enhance the public view of NASA while drawing the audience together via discourse of community.
An extended analysis of televised representations across a variety of television networks including CBS, CNN, PBS, and The History Channel (THC) during post-Apollo years, 1973-2004, provides confirmation that little had changed in the form of CBS’s initial rhetoric. However, there was a shift in whom the network’s deemed heroes of the space program. This analysis suggests that the media now place its primary focus on the creators of technology instead of the astronauts as in Apollo’s glory years. In addition, more contemporary representations have yet to focus on the experiences of women and African American engineers who were instrumental in getting the United States to and from the Moon before the Soviets during the cold war.
In sum, it was through the four rhetorical strategies and the binary oppositions that Carey’s ritual model of communication was evident on CBS, CNN, PBS, and THC. The reality of the public’s understanding of the Apollo project was created, repaired, transformed, and maintained through these mediated representations to reinforce American values in an effort to persuade the public to support Apollo, and more recently, NASA’s current manned missions into the final frontier.