Page 142 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

BITES AND BLIPS 131

assuming it—the politicians, the handlers, the publishers of USA Today
and its legions of imitators. David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times
writes (15 March 1989):

In 1967, according to the National Opinion Research Center at the
University of Chicago, 73% of the people polled said they read a
newspaper every day; by last year, the number of everyday
readers had fallen by almost one-third, to 50.6%. During that
same period, in the 18 to 29 age group, the number of ‘everyday
readers’ dropped by more than half, from 60% to 29%.
While 26.6 per cent of Los Angeles Times readers are aged 18 to 29, 36.
2 per cent of USA Today readers are that age. And whereas young
people used to acquire the habit of newspaper reading as they aged, this
is apparently no longer happening. To recoup their losses, newspapers
are trying to woo the young by filling up with celebrity profiles, fitness
features, household tips.
In 1988, the Department of Education published a report—a summary
of research hither and yon—on television’s influence on cognitive
development. The widespread publicity placed the emphasis on TV’s
harmlessness. The Associated Press story that ran in the New York
Times among other papers, for example, was headlined: ‘Yes, You Too
Can Get A’s While Watching “Family Ties”.’ But the report itself, by
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Daniel R.Anderson and Patricia A.Collins of the Department of
Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, is inconclusive on the
question of whether television-watching affects the capacity to pay
attention. ‘The possibility that rapid pacing may produce effects over
longer exposure has not been examined,’ reads one typical hedge.
‘There does…appear to be some effect of TV on attention, yet the
importance, generality, and nature of the effect is unknown’: that is the
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summary sentence. Some day the grants may flow for the research
obligatorily called for. But pending research, one still feels entitled to
the pessimism which one must then work to forget. Television may not
have eroded all possibilities for democratic political life, but it has
certainly not thrown open the doors to broad-based enlightenment. Just
as certainly, it has erected obstacles.
I have tried to show that there is ample precedent for a shriveled
politics of slogans, deceit and mystifying pageantry. But precedent is
nothing to be complacent about when systematic ignorance is the
product. And the problem, ultimately, is not simply that Americans are
ignorant (such, after all, is the claim of every generation besieged by