TELEVISION: Why Quiz Show Is a Scandal

"We're not exactly hardened criminals here," says the TV producer testifying before Congress at the end of Quiz Show. "We're in show business." By this point in Robert Redford's critically acclaimed new movie, no one can miss the irony of that line. The people who conspired to rig the big-money quiz shows in the 1950s, according to the film, were criminals all right -- and not despite but because of the fact that they were in show business. These connivers didn't just feed a few answers to favored contestants to boost ratings. They destroyed a nation's innocence. (Yes, again.)

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