Endless television is bad for society

In “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,� author and former advertising executive Jerry Mander argues that the medium of television is fundamentally corrosive to a democratic society and should be eliminated. Mander didn’t start his career with a fatalistic view of TV. He worked for many years as a television advertiser.

Over time, Mander became troubled by the startling power that a few corporations had to buy and produce advertising.

“I began to realize that a distortion was taking place in the quality and kind of information offered to the public. To a larger and larger extent, people’s minds were being occupied by information of a purely commercial nature,� says Mander.

He used his TV advertising expertise to help a variety of causes in the public interest. But he noticed time and again the dulling of the TV message and the triumph of style over content. Rather than adding to understanding, Mander explains, “people were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it.�

He concluded that TV itself gives an advantage to certain types of information and messaging, such as product advertisements that have no substance, and seek only to brand product imagery into the viewer. Sound familiar? Mander wrote this book in 1978!

    u    u    u

Television disconnects us from the real world by mediating our experience of the natural world. We lose direct contact with our natural environment when we spend time in front a TV, absorbing messages rather than accumulating and analyzing our own unique experiences. This is true today as viewers are bombarded with a variety of new mediated experiences from cell phones, video games and the Internet.

Over time, TV “becomes everyone’s intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness.� This is a problem because TV is controlled by a small number of corporate giants. In 1978, the station ownership cap limited any single station’s reach to not more than 25 percent of the national audience. The 1996 Telecommunications Act increased the cap to 35 percent. Today, it is 39 percent.

Since 1996, the lax regulations of the Federal Communications Commission have reduced the number of corporate conglomerates that control the media from 50 in 1980 to six today. The result? Reports indicate that the stations that cover the Olympics, the NCAA tournament and other nationally televised events spend 10 times more time reporting about it in their news segments than stations not airing the event.

The physiological and psychological effects of television are troubling. People say they become hypnotized, sluggish and passive — perfect conditioning for messages and other control. For example, studies show that Americans have a difficult time understanding the biases of the news. And, children under the age of 8 do not understand that the objective of commercials is to sell products. We spend far too much time passively observing rather than actively experiencing the world — perhaps a factor in the U.S. obesity epidemic.

TV has an inherent bias toward certain types of information. TV messages are “gross, simplified and linear.� Choosing and limiting the content makes TV an advertiser’s dream and controls awareness within a defined path.

    u    u    u

The concentration of media ownership, coupled with unquestioning passivity of the viewer, which TV inevitably induces, made Mander doubt that reform was possible. People are dependent on TV, even when not interested in the programming, due to quick and unexpected scene changes that capture attention. This is especially true during commercials. Advertisers rely on this trick to keep us watching ads even when we are aware of their inherent deception.

Also troubling is the artificial imagery that TV implants silently, unconsciously persuading the viewer to buy products and behave a certain way. As these persuasions creep into decision-making, the manufactured images come to life. We lose the ability to imagine and control our lives and communities according to our own needs, experiences and interests.

So perhaps eliminating TV is necessary for the survival of society. Over-reliance on processed images, news and experiences makes us lose unique humanity and person-to-person connections integral to formation of strong communities of caring and concerned neighbors. When we fail to work together for a common cause, we become even more isolated and unable to verify the validity of the human experience fed through television.

Emily Przekwas is an intern with The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest. She is a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines with a major in physics and a minor in engineering. Among other projects, she organized the summer filmmaking workshop, Focus on Winsted.