Community Forum: "The Brainwashing of My Dad"

"The Brainwashing of My Dad," a provocative documentary film about the influence of right-wing media framed by the personal narrative of filmmaker Jen Senko, will be screened at a Community Forum in Newbury Park on Sunday, Aug. 28. The 7 p.m. screening at the Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship will be followed by a Skype discussion with Senko.

In the movie, Senko recalls that in the 1960s, her father, a Kennedy Democrat, never had a bad word to say about any race or people or person. "In the '80s, after my dad discovered talk radio during the long commute to work, he suddenly didn't like black people, poor people, gay people, feminists, Hispanics and especially Democrats," she says on camera."After he discovered Fox News they became the enemy. What happened to dad?"

The documentary, narrated by actor Matthew Modine, shows strident voices on talk radio, television news and Internet sites. It traces changes in the media landscape to figures including future Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, who wrote a 1971 memo urging business leaders to influence instruments of public opinion including the news media, and Nixon adviser Roger Ailes, who long before becoming chairman of Fox News advocated producing pro-Administration news stories for local TV stations. It cites the Federal Communication Commission's 1987 cancellation of its fairness doctrine for the airwaves and includes analysis by cognitive linguists on how repetition of the same message transforms the brain.

Narrator Modine says of Senko’s experience, “In asking the question what happened to her dad, it was really like asking what happened to our media? And in asking what happened to our media, it was really like asking what happened to our country?”

The Community Forum at 3327 Old Conejo Road in Newbury Park is free and open to the public. For information, visit cvuuf.org/community-forum or contact Randall Edwards through the church office at (805) 498-9548.