"Democracy is a conversation," said former Vice President Al Gore, speaking Tuesday in the James Union Building, but in the present domination of television news media, "some extremely important elements of American democracy have been pushed to the sidelines."
Gore's address, "Media and Democracy," opened this week's Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence lecture series, "Self-Inflicted Wounds: Journalism's Lost Credibility."
Gore, a frequent speaker on the MTSU campus, chose to focus his presentation on television's one-way dispersal of news to the public, and the now-apparent flaws of the form.
"Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 39 minutes per day," Gore said. Despite every other medium, including the Internet, "it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America."
Unlike the printed and person-to-person news distribution of the past, television does not lend itself to the concept of a "public forum" where the audience has influence on the content they receive, he said.
Instead, the news media is forced to broadcast the most commercial content to satisfy its advertisers.
"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our public forum," he said. "Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate freely and fully…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."
In addition, Gore said, "our public discourse has recently taken on a quality of strangeness that is no longer possible to ignore."
The current government is oppressive to the freedom of the press, and between political restrictions and commercial interests there has been "virtually no meaningful debate" in times when it was most necessary, including the eve of the Iraq war.
Gore said that the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina offered a brief, missed window of opportunity.
"For a short time [there was] a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse, that reminded some Americans, including some journalists, that vividness and clarity used to be far more common in the way we talk to one another about the problems and the choices that we face," he said. "But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded."
"The public forum," he said, "has been grossly distorted and restructured beyond all recognition. It is the destruction of that…marketplace of ideas that accounts for the quality of strangeness that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation."
Gore said that he sees an independently owned television network, accepting specialized news content from amateur, on-the-spot journalists, as one possible solution to the problem.
He also views the Internet as a positive avenue for video-based journalism, envisioning a situation where individuals could both submit and select content to fit their interests. However, he said, it must be safeguarded to ensure such two-way journalism isn't blocked by the need for commercialization.
Following the address, Gore took additional time to meet and answer a number of questions from his audience. When asked what measures can be taken to change the kind of television news that viewers receive, he said, "I think the kind of important dialogue taking place at this forum, among journalists, is one of the ways…to try to get the upper hand once again for journalistic standards."
The Seigenthaler lecture series "Self-Inflicted Wounds" continues throughout today on the MTSU campus.
To listen to the audio version of Gore's address, please subscribe to the Sidelines podcast at www.mstusidelines.com/podcasts.
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