Acknowledge-To:  WHMurray@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Tue, 7 Apr 1992 11:28:00 EDT
From:         WHMurray@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Subject:      Good consequences of TV
Comments: To: ETHICS-L%UGA.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

>Can anyone give me a good consequence of TVs on viewers? I have already given
>about 60 public lectures against TV and nobody could give me a "good
>consequence" of it. Well, apart from one case: Dr.Michaela Gloeckler

I suspect that someone who has made sixty speeches on the evil
of TV and who has never heard anything good about it is not
likely to acknowledge any value in anything they hear now.
However, while much of TV may be mediocre and some of it even
destructive, one has to be an elitist to reject it out of
hand.

TV has made much of the world's culture accessible to the
majority of us who have mastered only spoken language.  For
example, more people heard one performance of an opera on TV
than had ever attended a live performance of an opera in the
history of the world.

Man is that being who tells stories and paints pictures,
makes music and dances, plays games and visits distant places
in search of adventure, beauty and truth.  Whatever wealth and
leisure (above subsistence) he has ever had, that is what he
has done with it.  Now you might not like the stories, the
pictures, or the songs, but to reject literature, music, or art
per se is to reject humanity.  To reject TV per se is to
reject popular culture.  It is to set yourself as an authority
superior to the collective authority.  While I often differ with
the collective authority, I try to acknowledge its inherent wisdom.

Television creates widely shared experiences.  The moon
landing, the fall of the Berlin wall, the Olympics,
the Academy Awards, and yes, even Desert Storm are examples.
Again, you may not like the content, but the experience is
human and humanizing.  It enlarges the sense of "we" and
humanizes "they."  Shared experiences and shared information
are essential to a sense of trust, community, and identity.
No other technology in the history of the world has had the
power of TV to create that sharing.

When George Schultz was Secretary of State, he watched CNN in
his hotel room in Moscow.  On his return he was interviewed on
CNN.  He took the first five minutes of the interview to try
to explain the power of CNN and the contribution that it was
making to world peace.  He observed that in every embassy that
he visited, any place in the world, the duty officer was
watching CNN; not just in US embassies, no, but in every
embassy.  The duty officer at the CIA and the KGB were
watching CNN.  The reduction in chances for miscalculation
leading to war is immense.

I do not think that it is accidental that the reduction in
mistrust between the East and the West was contemporaneous
with the rise of CNN.  Our current Secretary of State reports
that the first issue that he must deal with in meeting the
governments of the emerging states in the East is how they
can get a CNN satellite down link.  I knew that the August
coup in Russia had failed when I realized that CNN was still
broadcasting from Moscow on Monday morning (and when I could still
send and receive messages from Moscow on the internet).

To reject the value of the medium because you do not like the
content of the message or even its influence on the individual,
is to miss the importance of the message.  MacLuhan foretold
the global village; he would feel justified, vindicated, and even
satisfied by recent events (and he was no friend of TV).

William Hugh Murray, Executive Consultant, Information System Security
21 Locust Avenue, Suite 2D, New Canaan, Connecticut 06840
203 966 4769, WHMurray at DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU