At the Media Center’s We Media conference, held Wednesday and sponsored by the AP, Al Gore gave a speech in which he argued that “American democracy is in grave danger and “that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America’s fabled ‘marketplace of ideas’ now functions.”
Gore laid much of the blame at the feet of commercial television, pointing out that TV viewing accounts for “almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has.” He also says that “[t]he US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world.”
While Gore’s portrayal of the earlier days of our democracy seems overly idealized, his critique of today’s broadcast journalism as “dumbed down and tarted up” (Dan Rather’s words) strikes me as generally valid. The same is true of his suggestion that much of this is due to “the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession” and his claim that “[t]he greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet.”
Gore’s short history of our nation’s “marketplace of ideas” reads as follows, starting with the Age of Print:
Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers. Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens. Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.
Citing German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, Gore suggests that the era in which public discourse has become increasingly dominated by broadcast and cable TV represents “the refeudalization of the public sphere.”
Gore also makes a point about the power of 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.
At the end of his speech, Gore had some comments about the Internet, which I think understate both its current and future impact:
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.
Gore closes on a cautionary note regarding regulation and a potential rewrite of legislation governing the telecom, media and Internet sectors:
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.
To the extent Gore is correct in his critique of the “age of television” and his belief that “the greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet,” the more significant are his cautionary words with regard to the regulatory treatment of the Internet and any potential rewrite of the Telecom Act. The same is true on the business side, in terms of the importance of developing viable models that can financially support a broadband Internet-invigorated marketplace of ideas.
Personally, I have more faith in the entrepreneurs than in the politicians, so here’s hoping the latter do more good than harm in nurturing an environment that promotes entrepreneurial initiative and healthy competition in the incredibly creative global network we call the Internet.
Mitch Shapiro at 3:33 PM|Comments(0)
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