Television and the Growing Epidemic of Stupidity

Americans are among the most uninformed people on the face of the earth. We are surrounded by media of all sorts. We have access to newspapers,magazines, television, and the internet,and yet we are among the least educated people in the entire world. By the same token we also watch a disproportionate amount of television.

How bad is it? We sit in front of our television sets in the same way cavemen watched fires.
The average American spends between 5 and 6 hours watching TV. The only activities on which we spend more time are working and sleeping. That’s less time than we spend eating, with our spouses, or with our children. And the situation is even more abysmal where our children are concerned. Children under school age watch as much as eight hours of television a day. School age children watch a little less than eight hours a day. The average twenty-year-old has spent approximately two years watching television. At the same time reading and comprehension levels in every age group has plummeted. As a people we read less and comprehend less than we did ten years ago. In so far as writing is concerned, we are barely capable of stringing together a few simple sentences and that’s about it. As if that weren’t bad enough it appears as of the more television we watch the less we know about the vital issues of the day; and to make the situation even worse it doesn’t seem to matter what we watch. It can be Survivor, American Idol, news shows, the Simpsons, or Masterpiece Theater. The more television we watch the more stupid we become. (Interestingly enough there is some evidence to suggest that viewers of Fox News are even less informed than others.) And to make matters even worse, the trend does not appear to be improving. If anything we appear to be on a downward spiral with each successive generation watching more television but learning less and less. Indeed, the current generation is one of the first to know less than the generation before it.

So what happened? What went wrong? I had eluded to this in a previous post and I shall now go into some detail. Prior to the 1980’s there was a wall of separation between news and entertainment. News departments were not required to turn a profit. Instead they were carried by the media corporation which owned them. That corporation would use profits from its entertainment division to float the news department. The end result was a well-funded news department which was able to use corporation earnings to fund hour long news broadcasts, documentaries and undercover investigations. More importantly the news departments did not pander to the lowest common denominator. Without mandates to turn independent profits, there was no obligation for the news departments to make the news broadcasts entertaining. But that changed in the 1980s, during the Reagen Administration, as media corporations were gobbled up by the likes of General Electric and Disney, corporations which had no to little experience with news broadcasts. More interested in profits than in quality broadcasts, news departments were asked to pull their own weight without assistance from the rest of the corporation. That left less money in the coffers for investigative reporting, documentaries, and foreign reporting. The hourly format was cut to a half hour and, in their desire to turn even greater profits, the corporations demanded that the news broadcasts feature some form of entertainment. Worse yet, the news was often manipulated to suit the tastes of the viewers, in essence telling the viewers what they wanted to hear and not hard core news. In other words, the corporations were treating news broadcasts in the same way they were treating entertainment broadcasts, manipulating the news to suit the results of opinion polls and ratings surveys. It is no coincidence that we find a plethora of sex stories and fluffy “good news” broadcasts during sweeps weeks. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully sick and tired of the perennial stories about kidnapped blonds,lost puppy dogs, bizarre sex stories, and other types of fluff.

Perhaps the worst examples were the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson stories. For all intents and purposes these were local stories about individuals who just happened to be celebrities. They were not and should not have been national stories. But the American media operated under the two rules that they understand best: “If it bleeds it leads,” and “Sex sells.” One might argue that the Simpson and Jackson stories were important in that they “discussed” important social and legal issues, but surely those issues could have been handled in serious documentaries about spousal abuse, sex abuse, and the legal system. The information would have been presented in an intelligent fashion and, perhaps more importantly, more air time could have been devoted to serious issues of the day without pandering to the prurient interests of the viewers.

If our news has devolved into scandal and fluff, our entertainment has devolved into second rate garbage. Again, we have placed ratings above quality. The corporations have outdone themselves in a race to the bottom as they pander to the lowest common denominator of the viewer. We need not wonder why so much of our entertainment is composed of shoddy “reality based programs,” sexually charged sitcoms, trashy talk shows, and violent crime shows. Again the same rules which have bastardized our news broadcasts have also bastardized our entertainment shows: “If it bleeds it leads,” and “sex sells.” Is it any wonder why viewership continues to rise while basic intelligence continues to decline? In giving the people more of what they want to see we not only increase corporate profits, we also shortchange basic comprehension. The Founding Fathers understood that an educated public was essential for the well-being of a Democratic Republic and I suspect that the Powers that be, our political leaders, understand this as well. A “dumbed down” public is exactly what our leaders want to deal with, a public that is susceptible to catch phrases and dime store propaganda. Listen to the political rhetoric this year. Does any of it truly rise to the level of genuine eloquence? Does any of it make sense when subjected to a little, basic logic? Not really. In fact the best that can be said is that some of this year’s rhetoric is less offensive and less clumsy than the opposition’s, but only a fool would suggest that we have heard anything approaching eloquence. And that’s just fine with our politicians because it allows them to sell complicated ideas in brief sound bites. Why worry about eloquence when a 30 second attack ad will produce the same result. In fact I can well imagine a politician referring to an opponent’s eloquence as elitism. That’s how bad the situation has become.

Another way in which television dumbs us down is through short choppy scenes. To make room for more commercials (read “more profit”) actual programming was cut back to make room for more advertising. This resulted in a higher number of cuts and short choppy scenes which negated the need for a lengthy attention span. Their brains are now hardwired to expect at least 17 cuts in a given space of time. Teachers say they can tell the difference between children who are raised by television and children who were raised in homes where reading and learning took precedence over the boob tube. The difference being that the latter know how to sit down quietly and listen. In short they are less troubled by ADHD than children who were over-exposed to television.

If we want to do ourslves a favor we will turn off our television sets and turn our attention to print meida or reliable sites on the Interner, but whatever wwe do we must admit that television lowers attention span and deadens the intellect.