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October 06, 2005
Road to
Having read through Al Gore's incredibly long tirade (yes, 4,649 words is long), I'm struck by his indictment of television and radio for ruining America's tradition of freedom of speech, and his glorification of the printed word. I'm not about to fisk his entire speech, as I wouldn't want to inflict that on readers, and I doubt I could stay awake through such an ordeal. But I can't resist just a few excerpts: Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.Huh? I barely watch television. Once a week I'll watch something like Rome, and occasionally if there's a big event (like Katrina or Rita), I'll flip between CNN and Fox News to see what they're saying, but I prefer reading. And writing. To watching. 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.Now there's a mouthful. A printing press was a big deal, and while they were a major improvement over earlier, hand-written communications, it wasn't the same thing as owning a personal computer, which gives anyone the power to generate "essays, pamphlets, books or flyers" of any sort. Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.True. That's why I prefer the blogosphere. (I also like talk radio, and I think the interactivity of that medium helped paved the way for the blogosphere.) The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.If you don't like it, turn it off. Or better yet, start your own digital competition, and stream your video over the Internet. Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.I knew there had to be a reason for all those boring, tiny demonstrations. It's television! It's one of the reasons television bores me almost as much as Al Gore. So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.Hmmmm.... What is this? An opinion or a plug? (Just thought I'd ask.) And wasn't Hyatt that big fatcat trial lawyer who used to run national ads on TV? (Yes. And "you have my word on it.") It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.Refeudalization? I could have sworn that the blogosphere was going in precisely the opposite direction, but I'll continue.... with more Gore.... It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."Does that mean that Rush Limbaugh should have been kept off the air? By government regulations? And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.Wait! Wait! Who are "they"? Who are the squadrons? How were they "unleashed"? Gore does not say. Gee. The way he recalls the good old days of government regulations which kept Rush Limbaugh off the air, only to follow that with complaints that "they" have unleashed "digital brownshirts," I just have to ask something. Might the man be secretly wishing for some kind of new leash laws? What I found most disturbing about this 4,600 word diatribe is that either Al Gore has never heard of blogs, or else he has, and deliberately refuses to mention them. (Neither bodes well, in my opinion.) Fortunately, he does conclude with what sounds like a plea for Internet freedom, although that is sandwiched inside his complaint about the limitations posed by video streaming: First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.(It's a major reason I don't. My eyeballs are too damned tired.) 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.Try as I might (and despite my disdain for television) I'm just not seeing the connection between satellite and cable TV and grave risk for democracy. Why doesn't he explain the tie-in? And, again, what about blogs? There's only the vaguest hint: 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.Controlling the Internet marketplace? I'm not clear about what that means. The Internet -- whether accessed by cable, phone line, or WiFi, has shown itself rather tough to control, and although I am very worried about Google's and Microsoft's capitulation to government controls in totalitarian countries, I have seen no evidence that corporations (which by their nature only want to sell bandwidth), have any more interest in controlling the uncontrollable content which runs through it than any of the telephone service providers have over the content of what customers might discuss over the phone. 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.I agree, but not if "all means possible" includes government regulations. Or leashes. When (in a speech about today's media) someone of Gore's stature: then I think it's worth asking what he's talking about. It's a hell of a way to promote a new business venture. Sigh. Is he just trying to force me to watch his new show?
AND MORE: Glenn Reynolds links to Brendan Nyhan, who, despite the fact that he otherwise agreed with Gore, found the"digital brownshirts" remark disturbing: this sort of partisan attack will obscure, rather than clarify, the fundamental democratic issues that are at stake.I especially enjoyed the title of the post: "What is Al Gore talking about?" (If you find out, let me know!) posted by Eric on 10.06.05 at 12:20 PM
Comments
So Al preferred the days when Rush would have been illegal, but Dan Rather was one of the THREE sources of news in the country. There's no surprise there, is there? Robert Crawford · October 6, 2005 01:04 PM Excellent fisking of Al Gore's muddied call for censorship. Makes me glad once again that he was never President. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 6, 2005 01:56 PM I never wear brown shirts! I always wear blue shirts! Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 7, 2005 01:51 AM I keep on forgetting to attend the digital brownshirt conspiracy briefings on Thursday nights. Could someone catch me up on what we're supposed to do to the Left next week? John · October 7, 2005 07:35 AM |
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My Lord, you deserve a medal for sifting through that drivel. He talks of television's evils, but he owns a TV network. He speaks of digital brownshirts: 1 - does anyone know what that term means, 2 - I'm sure Jewish bloggers are real happy with him.