Posted on 11/12/2003 4:52:46 AM PST by Prov1322
TV has made nation complacent, Gore says By AMBER MCDOWELL, Associated Press November 12, 2003
NASHVILLE - The "quasi-hypnotic influence" of television in America has fostered a complacent nation that is a danger to democracy, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday.
Gore, speaking on "Media and Democracy" at Middle Tennessee State University, told attendees the decline of newspapers as the country's dominant method of communication leaves average Americans without an outlet for scholarly debate.
"Our democracy is suffering in an age when the dominant medium is not accessible to the average person and does not lend itself most readily to the conveyance of complex ideas about self-governance," Gore said. "Instead it pushes toward a lowest common denominator."
Gore said the results of that inaccessibility are reflected most prominently in the changed priorities of the country's elected officials, who feel that debating important issues is "relatively meaningless today. How do they spend their time instead? Raising money to buy 30-second television commercials."
Students and members of the community filled the 235-seat auditorium for Gore's appearance, and several hundred more watched his speech on a big-screen monitor set up in the building's lobby. It was the first of two lectures Gore has scheduled at MTSU as part of the "American Democracy Project for Civil Engagement," an effort to launch a national discussion on the "vigor of the national democracy."
Students at 200 college campuses across the country also watched Gore's speech via satellite, and asked the former vice president questions by calling a toll-free number.
Gore, who has taught several classes at MTSU, put on his professor's hat for much of the lecture, giving attendees a history lesson on the origins of communication and democracy - from the first evidence of complex speech 60,000 years ago to the invention of the printing press to the eventual evolution of media as it's known today and it's role in a free society.
Gore said democracy in America flourished at the height of the newspaper era, which "empowered the one to influence the many." That changed with the advent and subsequent popularity of television, he said, noting that the average American watches four hours of television a day.
"What does it do to us that has relevance to democracy? Does it encourage passivity? Is it connected to the obesity epidemic? ... If people are just staring at a little box four hours a day, it has a big impact on democracy," he said.
Gore said a remedy to television's dominance may the Internet, a "print-based medium that is extremely accessible to the average person."
"We have to choose to rehabilitate our democracy in part by making creative use of these new media and by insisting within the current institutions of our democracy that we open up access to the dominant medium," he said.
Gore's second speech is scheduled Nov. 25. Both appearances, sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and The New York Times, are part of MTSU's Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies.
Copyright 2003, KnoxNews. All Rights Reserved.
Al Gore has never been involved with reality.
Hmmm, why didn't they 'read all about' it in the next days newspaper and then pen letters to Gore as was done in the old days that Gore is proposing that we return to???? You mean they actually watched the Gore speech against television on satellite television? Hypocrits......
Notice that in the background, there's a dial telephone. Talk about living in the past!!
Funny grammar blunder in a piece about communication!
So now there is a delcine of Newspapers???
Let me guess .. Gore's gonna start one of them too huh?
Funny he should mind since this is EXACTLY what the Democratic Party sets out to do.
Gave it all of the fifteen seconds needed, if that, for extra heavy pondering used (given the material).
Al is more that two cards short, and more than two days late here, ain't he? An apt comment twenty years ago.
Simply not true anymore, AL. WE have moved on. WE are no longer massive TV watchers -- the ratings show that! WE aren't hypnotized into inaction by TV. When AL says we are not invloved, that democracy suffers ... where is all get out has HE been?
WE are the hyper-connected, internetting, cell-poneing, IMimg nation now. We have become VERY active in democracy. It's INTERACTIVE, BROADBAND, AL.
AL, go ask Jesse Ventura, Howard Dean, Kate Harris, ANYONE, any genuine practical politician, Al. They'll tell you -- not that you'd listen. Hard to speak to you, Mr. Deadwood.
Your worldview is totally mesmerized by your defeat, by what you expected to happen without any realtime basis for having it happen. Al, you are talking to an audience of only one. Yourself. About yourself.
Al Gore is the one frozen by unreal images of what never was.
Of course, HE never had the guts to watch Rush Limbaugh's fine, entertaining and politically educational TV program ...
Feh...
Just damn.
If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
LOL
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