Text 15870, 166 rader
Skriven 2005-10-06 19:33:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Fool cont...
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One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes 
of seeing information about an important world event that had happened 
earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been 
hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had 
trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news. 

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily 
Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction 
between news and entertainment. 

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment 
seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that 
fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they 
cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or 
both. 

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political 
ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 
30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of 
communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected 
officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these 
ads. 

That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for 
candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own 
personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now 
filling up with the wealthy. 

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the 
main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue 
is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will 
continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And 
ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power. 

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter 
the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they 
cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to 
raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their 
opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that. 

Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's 
Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were 
told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks 
that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White 
House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon 
complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, 
I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network 
immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon 
ad. 

The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of 
television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern 
pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, 
John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has 
altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are 
balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According 
to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high 
levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, 
much less needed. 

The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is 
now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace 
for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put 
forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to 
the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters. 

Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in 
effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially 
created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of 
consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of 
democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved 
enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no 
longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy." 

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to 
human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must 
resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new 
ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our 
future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment 
of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating 
the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the 
cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of 
intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth. 

I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I 
am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi- 
way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a 
meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a 
press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel. 

We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are 
made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public 
would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more 
diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But 
we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals 
and asking them to co-create our network. 

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible 
marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on 
video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send 
us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on 
the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with 
our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming 
our network. 

I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on 
creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices 
into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and 
wish you every success. 

I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that 
are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here 
today. 

First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most 
powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-
switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of 
bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), 
it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion 
video. 

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a 
powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are 
hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. 
We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary 
predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the 
leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our 
ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that 
neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain 
syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently 
as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue 
eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It 
is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an 
average of four and a half hours a day. 

It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the 
Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is 
making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what 
the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television 
watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to 
replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for 
carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite 
of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and 
satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and 
probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in 
America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe 
that America's democracy is at grave risk. 

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet 
remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on 
the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of 
the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. 
We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for 
it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and 
control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest 
in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at 
stake to ever allow that to happen. 

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's 
future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas 
that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of 
freedom.


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