The Awful Truth About Television TV Corrodes Community and Democracy
Sep 22nd 2008boybermNews and Society
Americans are watching more TV and doing less in their communities
Americans watch TV 4.5 hours per day on average. TV takes up so much time that citizens are becoming less active socially and politically. They also trust the government and each other less and less. Researcher Dr. Robert Putnam in a study found that the more TV people watched, the less they were involved in public activities.
“TV viewing is strongly and negatively related to social trust and group membership,” the study found. Newspaper reading, on the other hand, had a strong positive relationship. Newspaper readers were involved in larger numbers of political organizations. The study controlled for education, income, age, race, place of residence, work status, and gender.
The study also found that “heavy TV watching is one important reason why less educated people are less engaged in the life of their communities.”
TV: How the few can control the many
Television, because of the expense involved in production and distribution, inherently favors large corporations. Usually, the only other social entity able to afford the expense of TV is government.
It is inherently a one-to-many technology. The networks transmit one message over the airwaves or through the cable network to thousands or millions or, in the case of events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, billions of minds. This is different from the internet where many people can interact and discuss as a group.
Furthermore, because of the tendency of the television set to shut down people’s ability to think critically, as discussed in the “TV’s hypnotic effect” article, the message that is blasted out over the airwaves enters viewers’ minds unfiltered. Whether you agree with the message or not, that is simply too much power.
Five companies control the media
Looking at the amount of programming available, one might think that there is a wide variety of choice. There are literally hundreds of TV stations with options to choose from sports to news to cartoons to history to painting and more. The amount of options is staggering. However, only five major corporations control the majority of the media. Those companies get access to nearly every American for 4
Tags: community, corporations, Democracy, money, networks, politics, society, television, Time, tv