Television and Its Threat to Our Democracy

Lack of Community of Ideas, Focus on Emotional Appeal Rather Than Intellectual Appeal, and Inability to Provide Enough Information Appropriate for a Democratic Society

By Corey Sipe, published Sep 05, 2006
Published Content: 735  Total Views: 321,261  Favorited By: 3 CPs
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As a society turns to television for its primary source for news, it is obvious that its members will not hear the full story. Television is a unique medium that has obvious limitations. The need for dramatization, the problem of time constraints, the need for visual content, and the need to clarify complex stories all factor into the problem. Even with 24-hour news shows often the real story is not investigated in-depth like it is in other media sources such as newspapers, magazines, or even the Internet. Our state of democracy has declined as a result of television. 

Takeaways
  • Television has lowered our attention span
  • Television caused us to be more compliant
  • TV will continue to be a major threat to democracy unless news coverage increases quality & quantity
Did You Know?
Howard Beale accurately predicted how powerful television would become. "At the bottom of all of our terrified souls we know that democracy is a dying, giant a sick, sick, dying decaying political concept rioting in its final pain. I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, most popular, most advanced country in the world….The communists are deader than we are. What is finished is the idea that this great country dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals."
Resources
  • Alterman, Eric. What Liberal Media? (2003) New York: Perseus Books. Bishop, G.F., Oldendick, R.W. & Tuchfarber, A.J. (1980). The presidential debates as a device for increasing the “rationality” of electoral behavior. In G.F. Bishop, R.G. Beadow & M. Jackson-Beeck (Eds.) The presidential debates: Media, electoral, and policy perspectives. 1979-1976. New York: Praeger. Caruso, Fred C. & Gottfried, Howard [producers], & Chayefsky, Paddy. (1976) Network. [Motion picture]. United States of America: Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer (MGM) (U.S.) and United Artists (U.S.) Edelman, Murray. Constructing the Political Spectacle (1988) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Graber, Doris. Processing Politics: Learning from Television in the Information Age. (2001) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall & Walden, Paul. The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World. (2003) New York: Oxford University Press. ; McLeod, J.M., Bybee, C.R., & Durall, J.A. (1979). Equivalence of informed political participation: The 1976 presidential debates as a source of influence. Communication Research, 6, 463-487. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. (1985) New York: Viking. Tsafati, Y. (2003). Debating the debate: The impact of exposure to debate news coverage and its interaction with exposure to the actual debate. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 8(3): 70-86.
Comments
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This is a great article, very thorough and well thought out.

Posted on 01/17/2008 at 11:01:53 AM

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