The News Benders: Truth or Fiction?

I highly recommend watching this TV episode from 1968 called “The News Benders,” directed by someone named Desmond Lowden. It was part of a TV series called “Thirty-Minute Theatre,” aired on the BBC between 1965-1973. The IMDB page describes the series thusly: “An anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television.”

It appears to be similar to the Twilight Zone in that each episode has nothing to do with the last or the next–all the episodes are self-contained storylines and plotlines. So there is no background needed to understand what’s happening in this episode.

It’s 28 minutes long but I promise you, it will fly by. It’s worth your time.

Just watch it and let me know what you think.

Is this just a scary idea, or could it actually be how the world truly works?

The money quote:

J.G.: “For the past ten years, people have been looking at our fake newsreels, listening to our fake commentaries.”

Larkin: “And they accept it for the truth?

*J.G. nods*

Larkin: “And you can do it. . . Stop 100 people in the street, and how many of them have actually seen a missile or a satellite? They’re just told they exist, and they believe it.”

J.G.: “Now you’re getting there. I knew you would.”

It was very difficult to track down this clip. I first saw part of it on Owen Benjamin’s livestream and then found the full 28 minutes on YouTube after a bit of digging. The full show was only uploaded to YouTube yesterday. A five-minute excerpt was uploaded in 2011 but as of today it only has around 900 total views.

I saw that it was uploaded to archive.org in January of this year. I downloaded the clip and have it saved to my computer, and uploaded the full video here to my site.

Fascinating stuff.