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The Sound Bite Society
In
1995, Jeffrey Scheuer wrote an article for Dissent Magazine entitled "The
Television Thing." He sought to dispel the popular illusion that television
is a tool for liberalism. The focus of his argument was that television,
as an agent of simplification, actually favors conservatism.
After a few years of research and development, Scheuer expanded the fundamental ideas behind "The Television Thing" into a book entitled The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998). The book raised plenty of eyebrows in the field of media studies, and even garnered the reverent attention of Ralph Nader.
Below is an excerpt from the first chapter, "The Ascent of the Electronic Right":
Several recent trends underscore television's increasing power as a vehicle of conservative ideas. These include the political orientation of high visibility pundits and commentators; the tabloidization of TV news and the flourishing in the past decade of "soft" and tabloid shows, and the concurrent decline and dilution of both local and national network news; and the emergence of televangelism and the religious right. In different ways, each of these trends bears signatures of the conservative agenda and reflects television's amenability to simple, emotive, self regarding messages, and its corresponding aversion to complexity.
Outrage at tax increases plays well on the air; it is a simple, self-regarding conservative idea. Arguments for equalizing public school finance are less sound bite ready.
For liberals…these various interlocking barriers to progressive values and messages institutional, cultural, economic, journalistic are just the good news. In the world of telepolitics, the left faces a more basic problem than the polemics of Limbaugh, the corporate ethic of the networks, the philistine media culture, the narcissistic isolation of the average viewer, or that of lagging behind the Right in getting its voices funded and on the air. The TV lens itself is indentured to a way of seeing and mediating the world that is inherently punitive to liberalism. That lens, and not just the corporate domination of electronic media, or the narrow perception of a liberal media bias (or the powerful countercurrent induced by that perception), is the challenge that television poses for progressive politics. The left, in fact, has nothing to fear but television itself...
For more info, visit The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind
You can reach Jeffrey Scheuer at Jscheuer1@aol.com. More of his writing is available at his website, JScheuer.com.