Okay, I think you’ve gone way to philosophical with your watching. It’s a movie satire of the cynical forces of media, money and international corporations on society, not Heidegger’s Being in Time. It’s about corporate and human accountability in the media.
However Chayefsky’s handwritten note on early scripts probably sun it up best, “the destruction of a buccaneering independent TV HOTSHOT by surrendering his identity, patriotism and self to the dehumanized multinational conglomerate” — nothing less than “FAUST + MEPHISTOPHELES today.”
This does leave me the opportunity to mention the Howard Beale character’s announcement he was going to blow his brains out live on-air was actually inspired by anchorwoman Christine Chubbuck who did just that in 1974 while Paddy was working on his script.