Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

March 21, 2011 at 4:00 pm · Filed under ACTivism, Advertising, America, Consumption, DrugZ®, Educational, Feedback, Gun-Play, Health & Wellness, Hi-Tech, Lifestyle, Propaganda, Republican'ts and tagged: CONTROL, Hyperactive, Jerry Mander, tv

A total departure from previous writing about television, this book is the first ever to advocate that the medium is not reformable. Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous — to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes — that TV ought to be eliminated forever.

“They give power to a very small number of people to speak into the brains of everyone else in the system night after night after night with images that make people turn out in a certain kind of way. It affects the psychology of people who watch. It increases the passivity of people who watch.“

"Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely . . . Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen." -- from 1984 by George Orwell

Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are “neutral,” benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, “as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns.”

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Television is advertising. It is a medium whose purpose is to sell, to promote capitalism.

About the Author

Jerry Mander holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Economics, spent 15 years in the advertising business, including five as president and partner of Freeman, Mander & Gossage, San Francisco, one of the most celebrated agencies in the country. After quitting commercial advertising, he achieved national fame for his public service campaigns, leading the Wall Street Journal to call him “the Ralph Nader of advertising.”

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