SCN: TV leftwing?
Doug Schuler
douglas
Wed Oct 25 15:57:11 PDT 2000
FYI...
To: loka-alert at egroups.com
From: "The Loka Institute" <Loka at Loka.org>
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 22:16:39 -0000
Subject: TELEVISION'S CONSERVATIVE BIAS (Loka Alert 7:5)
Loka Alert 7:5 (25 October 2000)
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
WHERE APPROPRIATE
THE TILT OF THE TUBE
The Structural Conservative Bias of Television
By Jeffrey Scheuer
Friends & Colleagues:
In this Loka Alert author (and longtime Loka Institute Board member)
Jeffrey Scheuer dissects the familiar claim of political
conservatives that the U.S. mass media -- television especially --
evince a leftwing bias. To the contrary, argues Scheuer, the
structural properties of television offer systematic advantages to
the conservative wing of the political spectrum. Scholars and
activists alike will want to come to terms with his challenging and
original thesis.
This is one in an occasional series on the democratic
politics of research, science, and technology issued free of
charge by the nonprofit Loka Institute. TO BE ADDED TO THE LOKA
ALERT E-MAIL LIST, or to reply to this post, please send a message to
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<Loka at Loka.org>).
Cheers to all,
Dick Sclove <Richard at Sclove.org>
(Dick Sclove, the Guest Editor of this Loka Alert, is the founder and
former Executive Director of the Loka Institute. For an illustrated
update on how he is enjoying his sabbatical, see the photograph at:
<http://www2.cio.com/archive/100100_interview_content.html>)
The Loka Institute
Jill Chopyak, Executive Director
P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA
E-mail <Loka at Loka.org> Web <http://www.Loka.org>
Tel. 413-559-5860; Fax 413-559-5811
***********************************************************
CONTENTS
(I) THE TILT OF THE TUBE by Jeffrey Scheuer.......(5-1/2 pages)
(II) LOKA INSTITUTE UPDATES........................(1 page)
(III) INTERNSHIPS AT THE LOKA INSTITUTE...........(1/3 page)
(IV) ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE....................(1/3 page)
***********************************************************
(I) THE TILT OF THE TUBE
The Structural Conservative Bias of Television
By Jeffrey Scheuer <JScheuer1 at aol.COM>
http://www.thesoundbitesociety.com
SIMPLE VS. COMPLEX IDEAS -- AND WHY THE DIFFERENCE MATTERS
Do technologies have ideologies? Are machines morally and
politically neutral extensions of human scientific genius? Or are
their effects at times latent, obscure, unpredictable, but profound
in their impact on social and power relations? These questions have
important political implications for progressive scholars and
activists.
Viewed from one angle, technologies -- machines and mechanical
systems -- are patently morally and politically innocent. As
inanimate objects lacking consciousness, they cannot project or
pursue human values. They are not existential agents. Communication
technologies, on this view, deliver messages, but messages are not
embedded in their very structure.
>From another angle, however, machines are deeply implicated in
society and social structures. Cars, for example, allow their users
more individual freedom than mass transit systems. But they are also
inherently less egalitarian. Not everyone can afford a car, and when
communities (such as suburbs) are designed for automobiles, they
reward car-owners and punish others. Car-based cultures also keep us
separated from one another, closed off (with families or immediate
friends) in our own metallic domains. They encourage us to compete
for space rather than to share it, they reflect our differences of
status and taste, and so on.
The difference between seeing cars (or any other technologies) as
neutral devices and seeing them as ideologically-charged is not a
difference between a true perspective and a false one, but rather
between a simpler and a more complex one.
Both perspectives (and a spectrum of possible intermediate views) are
valid on their face, and in their own terms. The simpler view has
the advantage of its own obviousness and accessibility. The more
complex perspective, while appealing to a narrower audience -- an
audience with a higher tolerance of social complexity -- explains
more broadly and more deeply.
Here's the kicker: the complex view of technology (and, indeed, of
government and society in general) is the natural view of the left.
The simpler view is that of the right. Both views have their merits,
up to a point. Which we choose cannot be decided by some supreme
principle, but reflects our subjective appetite for complexity.
And here's the follow-on kicker: one particular, dominant technology
of our times -- television -- naturally favors the conveyance of
ideas and perspectives that are simpler. Television, by its very
design and structure, is inherently more hospitable to the messages
and values of the right.
TELEVISION AS A TOOL OF THE LEFT?
A simple, unbridled faith in technology is a pillar of American
conservatism, and sister to the unbridled conservative faith in the
market. These twin faiths are linked to the broader conservative
habit of seeing the world through simpler lenses. The conservative
faith in technology and markets is thus linked as well with an
aversion to the deeper and more systematic modes of understanding
that are the implicit goal of progressives and the left.
This applies to television as much as to anything else. If we regard
TV as merely "a toaster with pictures" (the unintentionally
ridiculous phrase of Mark Fowler, a Federal Communications Commission
member under President Ronald Reagan), then there is not much more to
say about its social and political effects. End of discussion --
burn the toast.
But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that television, unlike
toasters, actually pervades American life and consciousness; that
something we typically watch for several hours a day actually
influences our lives and our ideas; and that it cannot possibly be
without some profound political effects.
Conservatives also claim that the media are progressive. (TV is a
liberal toaster.) They've been saying this for years. Television
and the printed press, they say, are dominated by progressives who
shape how we see the news.
Now this is an interesting claim, and not entirely without merit.
And it bears noting that most, if not all, media criticism from the
right consists of variations of that claim. No doubt many members of
the journalistic community, and many other producers of media and
popular culture, are progressives of one form or another. But --
with particular reference to television -- I'd like to mention a few
minor objections to the "liberal media" argument. In fact, a lot of
minor objections, leading up to one major one.
Let's start with the little ones. First, the majority of journalists
in the so-called progressive media, in recent surveys, are to the
right of the rest of America on economic issues. On social issues
they remain somewhat to the left. Second, professional imperatives
and other pressures on most journalists override personal political
leanings. It just doesn't matter that much how a mainstream reporter
or producer or editor votes. It seldom shows in his or her work.
(I'm not counting journals of opinion or highly-opinionated TV talk
shows).
Third, the mainstream media are owned and operated by an oligopoly of
giant corporations -- like AOL Time Warner, General Electric, and
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- which are not interested in
journalistic glory or investigative reporting. Their only agenda is
the bottom line. And commercial profit in the media means
entertainment, not muckraking or rocking the boat.
Fourth, the boundaries between editorial and advertising and
marketing (and entertainment generally) are eroding virtually across
the board in American journalism. That's not a sign of progressive
bias. Fifth, recent Democratic candidates in America -- Carter,
Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, to say nothing of candidates lower down
the ballot -- have not exactly had a free ride in the media. Sixth,
the most brilliant manipulators of the U.S. media, perhaps ever, were
the handlers of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. (Mark Hertsgaard, in
his book On Bended Knee, explains where the progressive media were
during the Reagan presidency: nowhere to be seen.)
And is it the progressive media that make it so hard to get elected
to anything in America if you've ever smoked pot, worn a beard, loved
a member of your own sex, professed atheism, or called yourself
a "liberal"?
Television certainly can't be called progressive based on the
accuracy of its characterizations of minorities, working people, the
poor, gays, spiritualists, or deviant lifestyles. Nor is it the left
that insists debate on political talk shows be mainly between the
center and the right. Even public television has become a bastion of
conservative politics and business-oriented shows, funded by ultra-
conservative private foundations like Scaife, Olin, Bradley, JM, and
so forth. Maybe that's why such arch-conservatives as William F.
Buckley, Patrick Buchanan, Robert Novak, John McLoughlin, Cal Thomas,
Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk set the political tone of the electronic
media. Not to mention the latest ranting, homophobic entry into this
crowd, Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
Furthermore, it isn't the progressive media that have made TV a
powerful vehicle for the religious Right -- vaulting Jerry Falwell,
Pat Robertson, and other Christian broadcasters from obscurity to a
central position in American political life. And the tabloid TV
shows are not exactly celebrations of equality, tolerance, and social
harmony.
Finally, it wasn't the progressive media that brought us Ronald
Reagan, Oliver North, and the most conservative Congress in American
history - led by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Dick Armey,
John Kasich, and Tom DeLay.
Accusing the media of being progressive has been a brilliantly
successful ploy of the right. The conservative commentator William
Kristol put it best: "I admit it, the liberal media were never that
powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by
conservatives for conservative failures."
TELEVISION: THE HIDDEN HANDMAIDEN OF CONSERVATISM
But quite apart from the media environment and the content of TV
shows, there is a more basic way in which television lends itself to
conservative values and messages. This argument against the media's
putative liberalism takes roughly the form of a syllogism:
1. Electronic media radically simplify the world -- or at
least, they relentlessly and pervasively encourage us to see it in a
simpler way.
2. Simpler views of politics and society are quintessentially
conservative, and more complex views are quintessentially progressive
and radical.
3. It follows that the simplifying filters of television and
radio promote the tidy sound bites of the right and militate against
the more complicated ideas of the left.
How does television simplify? It offers us a deceptively narrow lens
on social reality, one that focuses on highly specific points in time
and space: confined scenes, brief actions, individuals, small
groups. Television is all about immediacy, action and singularity.
It's great for depicting spectacles: news conferences, sporting
events, ceremonies, wild animals in the bush. It compartmentalizes
and disintegrates experience, rather than connecting or integrating.
By personalizing and dramatizing social life, and by presenting
experience in artificially concrete terms, TV is perfectly suited to
visceral, uncomplicated messages.
Conversely, television ignores or resists complexity in all its
forms: context, remote causes and effects, ambiguity, and perhaps
most of all, disparities between appearance and reality. The tube
therefore de-emphasizes larger ideas that it cannot depict onscreen:
social movements, causes (including social causes), economic
conditions, historical forces, distant ramifications, collective
enterprises, evolutionary progressions, underlying patterns. And
these latter, I would suggest, are precisely the intellectual
foundations of egalitarianism and the left.
Conservatism at its best (and worst) is centered on simpler values:
the independent self and nation, and a political minimalism based on
smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations, a more limited
agenda, fewer rights and duties. Like television itself,
conservatism is skeptical of the hidden, the systemic, the
paradoxical, the contradictory, the remote.
The values and messages of the American right -- small government,
laissez-faire, "rugged individualism," its views on defense, crime,
faith, family, guns -- revolve around simple orthodoxies: market
fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, moral and constitutional
fundamentalism.
Liberalism, on the other hand, is based on more complex notions of
interdependent communities and a more structured society, with a more
intricate social contract. It asks more of us and offers more in
return: more equality, more government, more change -- not the sorts
of things you'd immediately think of as telegenic.
Hence my central, contrarian claim: television is an ideal medium not
just for polemical sound bites and attack ads, but for the more
limited ideas and agenda of the right. The electronic media may be
progressive in some ways, but overall their effects are conservative.
Of course there are exceptions and complications to this argument.
TV is not a right-wing conspiracy. And dignified simplicity
certainly has its place as the arch principle of a tolerant,
libertarian brand of conservatism -- a brand that still plays a
significant role in American life, but one that isn't highly visible
in the media.
Likewise, complexity -- especially academic complexity -- has its
limits and tactical liabilities. And of course the left can
sometimes be polemical and simplistic too. But even then, it is
invariably on behalf of more complex underlying values. (Where are
the snappy sound bites for day care, health care, full employment,
legal aid, college loans, worker safety? Where's the bumper- sticker
slogan for single-payer health insurance or equalizing public school
funding across districts?)
Post-industrial societies are rapidly becoming more complex -- a
reason, perhaps, why people seek political refuge in simple, divisive
slogans and sound bites. What can the left do about it? Television
will be with us, in one form or another, for a long time to come.
Even as it converges and merges with the Internet, TV will not
fundamentally change -- at least not in foreseeable ways that will
dramatically alter its political valences.
What the left must do is focus on understanding the media and the
specific challenges they pose to progressive values and messages.
This involves devising progressive sound bites, but also recognizing
the limits of sound bites as vehicles of progressive ideas. It also
involves teaching kids to be media literate -- teaching them how to
decode, analyze, and distinguish various kinds of messages and
images. Other countries (including the U.K., Canada and Australia)
are much further along in this area. Media literacy is critical
thinking about media, and we need it in America.
However, as you might suspect, critical thinking and media literacy
are complex enterprises. They encourage us to look beyond arguments
and appearances, and thus are inherently subversive, anti-commercial,
and egalitarian. It will be hard to bring conservatives on board
that bandwagon.
But the first step for progressive advocates and thinkers is
recognizing the problem. The left has nothing to fear but television
itself.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey Scheuer <JScheuer1 at aol.COM> is a member of the Board of
Directors of the Loka Institute and author of the new book THE SOUND
BITE SOCIETY, from which this Loka Alert has been loosely adapted.
Critical appraisal of Jeffrey Scheuer's
SOUND BITE SOCIETY: TELEVISION AND THE AMERICAN MIND
(New York and London: Four Walls Eight Windows Press)
http://www.thesoundbitesociety.com
"One of the most incisive critiques of television and its cultural
impact I've read in years. Mr. Scheuer makes his case with a
precision and clarity that will resound with anyone who's ever
wondered . . . how we managed to let our national political discourse
become an incomprehensible blur of sound bites."
-- _Electronic Media_
"Breaks new intellectual ground . . . lively and invigorating . . . a
delicious writing style . . . deeply incisive."
-- _The Chicago Tribune_
"[A] brilliant analysis of TV grammar and how it prohibits complex
discourse.
-- _Choice_, Feb. 2000
"An insightful but profoundly unsettling volume."
-- Langdon Winner in _Dissent_, Spring 2000.
************************************************************
(II) LOKA INSTITUTE UPDATES
LOKA PARTICIPATES IN EUROPEAN COMMISSION-FUNDED PROJECT
The Loka Institute is a partner in a project funded by the European
Commission to begin the development of an international network of
community research centers/science shops. The SCIPAS (Study and
Conference for Improving Public Access to Science) group is a
consortium of institutes and organizations from Denmark, Northern
Ireland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Romania, South
Africa and the United States, with informal representation from
Canada and England.
The group is studying the trends, operations, and developments within
community-based research and community research centers/science shops
around the world. Studies undertaken by consortium partners include:
1. An inventory of best practice employed by and ways of operating
the science shops in some of the participating countries.
2. An inventory of support mechanisms for the creation of new science
shops in various countries.
3. The structure of a training program for science shop co-
coordinators.
4. A blueprint for the international publication and dissemination of
results and studies.
5. The creation of a public database of science shops, and a model
for internet communication
6. A study on the influence of science shops on university curricula
and research.
7. A study on the potential for international science shop/community
research center co-operation.
Through the project the consortium intends to lay the foundations for
an international network of 'science shops' that will hopefully open
its doors with further EU support in 2001.
The international conference on science shops will be held in
Brussels in January 2001. Conference registration and information can
be found at <http://www.bio.uu.nl/living-knowledge>
************************************************************
(III) LOKA INSTITUTE INTERNSHIPS
The Loka Institute has openings for volunteers,
graduate and undergraduate student interns, and work-study
students.
Interns' responsibilities include updating our Web
page; managing email lists and listservs; conducting
background research on issues concerning science,
technology, and society; and helping with administrative
work. Interns committing to a semester or more will have the
opportunity to integrate independent research into their
internship experience.
Candidates should be self-motivated and able to work as
part of a team as well as independently. A general knowledge and
comfort with computers is needed. Experience in Web page maintenance
is preferable. Undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent
graduates are welcome to apply. Loka is able to provide interns with
an expense stipend of $35 per day for volunteering (or $700 per month
full-time-equivalent).
If you are interested in working with us to promote a
democratic politics of science and technology, please send a
resume and a succinct cover letter explaining your interest
and dates of availability to: The Loka Institute, P.O. Box
355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA. We also are accept applications by e-
mail to <Loka at Loka.org> or by fax to 413-559-5811.
************************************************************
(IV) ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE
The Loka Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated
to making research, science and technology responsive to
democratically decided social and environmental concerns.
Current Loka projects include:
o The Community Research Network
o Deliberative Citizens' Panels on Science & Technology
o Identifying Democratic Technologies
o Building a Constituency for Democratizing Research,
Science & Technology
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE, to
participate in our on-line discussion groups, to download or
order publications, or to help please visit our Web page:
<http://www.Loka.org>. Or contact us via E-mail at
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