Inch at a time…
The idea that “change is incremental” in a democratic republic stuck with me from my undergraduate days. It means simply that rules establish institutions, and changes in those institutions follow established rules.
This is no law of nature, and it certainly isn’t a law of governance or administration. Radical change is always possible, but it requires a break-down in the rules, a break-down in the institution.
Journalism is an institution. So is television. Occasionally, these two institutions intersect to the detriment of journalism, governance, and administration. Television argues for its own rules and usually wins.
Al Gore spoke to these issues (not in the way I have characterized them here) at a lecture at Middle Tennessee State University on Tuesday. His topic was “Media and Democracy,” and he takes a dim view of television just as I do. From an article by the Associated Press:
Gore said a remedy to television’s dominance may [be] the Internet, a “print-based medium that is extremely accessible to the average person.”
“We have to choose to rehabilitate our democracy in part by making creative use of these new media and by insisting within the current institutions of our democracy that we open up access to the dominant medium,” he said.
I’m not sure how we can achieve his latter proposal or if it would do any good. Public access to television would surely be as visual, dramatic, and emotional as the commercial product; that’s what television is, that’s the message of the medium.
But I remain optimistic about the potential of the “print-based” internet. I wouldn’t be wasting my time typing these words if I didn’t think I was able to have some small, incremental impact. I can make incremental change in a way very similar to the incremental change I make in the classroom–one lesson at a time, one mind at a time. And I am mightily encouraged by the wise and talented company of so many bloggers who obviously believe the same thing.
While I share your “dim view of television”, my reaction to Gore’s speech was more akin to Jeff Jarvis’. http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_11.html
I was commenting on television, the internet, and the nature of institutional change. Jarvis’ is doing something quite different.