From Kris Broughton at Big Think
“We as a nation are television watchers. Not only do we learn about politics by watching television, but we are television watchers; who we are as humans is in part defined by the attention that we pay to the television.”
Roderick Hart
It led me to conclude that if a person is prone to base all of his or her political opinions on the information they get from television, then they are usually forming their outlook with data that is often colored by the broadcast medium itself. The need for television networks to inject their own sense of drama into the fractious debates surrounding healthcare, war and global warming can often create a political narrative that is more melodramatic than the actual events.
Most of the kinds of things that make for great TV moments -- asking the president if he thinks Afghanistan will be another Vietnam, making references to unofficial communications between the White House and the Senate Majority leadership, or describing President Obama “bursting into a meeting” during the Copenhagen emissions conclave -- don’t really convey enough useful information for the average citizen to make well-informed decisions.