Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

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Without the human bias toward belief, the media could not exist. What's more, because the bias is so automatic and unnoticed, the media, all media, are in a position to exploit the belief, to encourage you to believe in their questionable sensory information. This bias to believe has commercial value for the media since it allows them to keep your attention, as though it were south-flying birds you were seeing. The media, all media but particularly moving-image media, which present data so nearly natural, effectively convert our naive and automatic trust in the reliability of images into their own authority.

All Television Is Real

There is a widespread belief that some things on television are "real" and some things are not real. We believe the news is real. Fictional programs are not real. Sports events are real; when we see them happening on television, we can count on the fact that they happen as we see them. Talk shows are real, although it is true that they happen only for television and they sometimes happen some days before we see them. Situation comedies are not real; neither are police dramas, although they may be based on real events from time to time.

Are historical progams real? Well, no, not exactly. Most are re-created versions of events that happened a long time ago when cameras didn't even exist. The people we see in them are actors, playing real people, or at least people who used to be real but are now dead. The actors are speaking for them, but they are usually not saying the exact words that the real people said. Also, some of the events in the historical treatment are dropped out-for reasons of time, or because they don't fit the line of the story-and some others are left in. So is it real? Or is it semireal? Or not real?

Advertising is, of course, definitely not real. Well, on the other hand, those are real people in those ads-we see them walking and talking but the situations they are portraying are not real, although of course they may be true to life. Does this make them more real? How about Captain Kangaroo? Sesame Street? Are they real? Again, they are real people dealing with real subjects: animals, kids, math, jokes . .. but what does "real" mean in that context?

Our society assumes that human beings can make the distinction between what is real and what is not real, even when the real and notreal are served up in the same way, intercut with one another, sent to us from many distant places and times and arriving one behind the other in our houses, shooting out of a box in our living rooms straight into our heads.

What we see in our heads are real-looking human beings, walking and talking as though they were real, even though much of the time they are not, or, that is, the parts they are playing are not, or the people they are playing are no longer alive.

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