This is an article from the 2026 Civitas Examiner (Volume 3, No. 2) and was written by one of our students, Emily. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
Years before a thoughtful exposé by a certain Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein or Lyndon B. Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin, Americans had already been lied to–by their televisions.
In 1958, NBC’s “Twenty-One,” and other popular high-stakes game shows, such as “The $64,000 Question,” were discovered to be rigged. The public soon found out that contestants were coached by producers about how to act while on camera and how to best deliver answers to questions that were given in advance.
But, did these quiz show scandals rock the public’s trust?
Some viewers at home did not seem to mind the deceit. An unofficial poll by the Miami Herald showed that most Miamians wanted the quiz shows to return.
“Everything on TV is somewhat of a lie, but it’s still entertainment,” a viewer said to the Miami Herald.
When Robert Redford, director of “Quiz Show,” star of his own share of movies which provided political and social commentary including “All The President’s Men” and “The Candidate,” sat down with Bobbie Wygant, he was asked, “Why would they make a movie about [the quiz show scandals] in 1994?”
“It has so much to do with where we are today,” said Redford. “We can be so numb, so cynical, and so shoulder-shrugging about major moral violations in our lives… Falls from grace from presidents to military people to political figures, religious leaders, and so it leaves us with this kind of eroded trust.”
“A society that’s kinda awash in moral ambiguity is not a great place to be,” said Redford. “So how did we get there?”
The question of “how did we get there?” isn’t so much of a surprise anymore. Retrospectively, we can cite Watergate and LBJ and of course, the quiz show scandals. In the present, we may turn to the proliferation of misinformation, the increasingly public incompetence of our elected officials, and Merriam-Webster’s 2024 word of the year, “polarization.”
According to Pew Research Center, though “trust in government has been low for decades,” “just 17% of Americans now say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%)” as of 2025.
We see the modern, but long familiar, symptoms of this lack of trust in government and public institutions in the ways that people choose to not vote, and choose to not participate in an important check on government and a focus of “Quiz Show”–accountability.
At the center of “Quiz Show” are fictional portrayals of the real-life “Twenty-One” contestants Herb Stempel and Charles Van Doren.
“He was tall, thin, and WASPy, and I was this Bronx Jewish kid. It was as simple as that,” said Stempel to the Los Angeles Times, when they wrote about “Quiz Show,” the then-upcoming 1994 movie about Twenty-One, for which Stempel would be a whistleblower.
Stempel, intelligent but nerdy, and in the eyes of producers, needed to be replaced to boost ratings, surrendered his title to Van Doren, well-educated, tall, and untouchable. Sparking a congressional investigation, Stempel exposed “Twenty-One” as rigged, and Van Doren, who initially denied the deception, as a liar.
“See, I don’t think an adult of your intelligence ought to be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth,” says one of the representatives presiding over the hearing when Van Doren admits to the rigging. In “Quiz Show,” Van Doren is held accountable.
“Quiz Show” is not just a retelling of how we got “there,” it is a difficult, yet simple, prescription for how to fix a still-widening hole in the trust the American people have in our government.
I don’t think accountability is a difficult idea to understand. But, I think we underestimate how much the accountability of many comes from our own accountability. This accountability looks like voting in as many elections as possible. Like reading the news everyday. Like starting or restarting an uncomfortable conversation. Like convincing yourself that change, which often starts with accountability, is truly and absolutely possible.
