Text 15869, 372 rader
Skriven 2005-10-06 19:33:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Gore
============
Excellent.  Let this fool keep talking...

===========================

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/06/D8D2IU703.html

Text of Gore Speech at Media Conference
Oct 06 10:04 AM US/Eastern
   

By The Associated Press
NEW YORK


Here is the text of former Vice President Al Gore's remarks at the We


Media conference on Wednesday in New York: 

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave 
danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public 
discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something 
has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled 
"marketplace of ideas" now functions. 

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the 
last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an 
alternate universe"? 

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans 
said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us 
on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third 
and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning 
and supporting the attack. 

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial 
was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from 
the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now 
we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial 
obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time. 

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it 
feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the 
practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of 
whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in 
the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is 
widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income 
families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our 
role as citizens? 

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving 
senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: 
"Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?" 

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually 
no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the 
former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William 
Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the 
greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." 

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's 
question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, 
in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full 
and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between 
war and peace? 

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over 
time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the 
Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that 
what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any 
more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere 
else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests 
in order to buy 30-second TVcommercials for their next re-election 
campaign. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short 
time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public 
discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - 
that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk 
with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, 
like a passing summer storm, the moment faded. 

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was 
consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably 
the most literate generation in all of history, used words with 
astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason. 

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their 
trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed 
particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well- informed. 
And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of 
ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge. 

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had 
grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after 
Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval 
information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the 
Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason." 

Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish 
was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of 
Reason." 

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient 
Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public 
forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which 
individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in 
the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their 
fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus 
they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made 
a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of 
the printing press. 

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial 
fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half 
century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's 
fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our 
Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books. 

Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing 
press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's 
public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words 
in print. 

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed 
since the majority of Americans received their news and information from 
the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most 
part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. 
Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most 
of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by 
television. 

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for 
our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the 
flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an 
authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 
four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world 
average. 

When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep 
and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost 
three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American 
has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher. 

The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is 
important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. 
Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually 
simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an 
important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in 
a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes. 

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of 
information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the 
television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by 
faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, 
men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar. 

But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and 
information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued 
to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned 
to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in 
America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't 
exist." 

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been 
pushed to the sidelines . And the most prominent casualty has been the 
"marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by 
our Founders. It effectively no longer exists. 

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public 
matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders 
searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been 
grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition. 

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas 
that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our 
efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation. 

Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere" , or a 
marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and 
debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in 
America's earliest decades. 

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made 
it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally 
understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government 
was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place 
where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so 
important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and 
beyond the authority of government. 

The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas 
were: 

1) It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the 
necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not 
only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute 
information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all; 
2) The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most 
part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to 
be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the 
individual responsible for them; 3) The accepted rules of discourse 
presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to 
search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" 
is all about. 

What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new 
development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly 
mediated between wealth and power. 

The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all 
humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I have sworn upon the alter of 
God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of 
man." It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the 
human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could 
yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther 
frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, 
we still dream, for all. 

And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self- 
government was understood to be the instrument with which the people 
embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under- 
girded and strengthened the rule of law. 

But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially 
the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective 
judgments presumed in our Founders' design -- depended on the particular 
characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the 
Age of Print. 

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and 
how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the 
easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national 
conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes 
it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for 
a national conversation today. 

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. 
They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset 
essays, pamphlets, books or flyers. 

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely 
inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in 
ideas contributed by individual citizens. 

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more 
people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. 
But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one 
direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no 
conversation. 

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community 
and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite 
spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. 
The production of programming has been centralized and has usually 
required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, 
an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of 
the television programming in America. 

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people 
who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came 
up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national 
conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which 
began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production 
designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough 
to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however 
plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now 
rarely an avenue for expression on national television. 

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the 
printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in 
television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change 
that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not 
coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information 
network in all of American television. 

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in 
American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" 
on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind 
for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with 
imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen. 

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as 
"the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like 
gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal 
system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge 
and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and 
power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no 
mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. 
And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance. 

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over 
this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging 
the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the 
predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, 
there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on 
democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if 
control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can 
be free." 

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- 
including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and 
the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were 
effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and 
other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves. 

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. 
Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie 
"Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a 
farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed 
into the news business, which became the media industry and is now 
completely owned by conglomerates. 

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest 
and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit 
centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance 
the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. 
They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, 
fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to 
influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and 
canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the 
ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and 
most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are 
usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do. 

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control 
and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They 
placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a 
reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at 
crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press 
releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in 
return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of 
digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical 
of the President. 

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a 
comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in 
the world. And that too seems strange to me. 

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the 
imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism 
profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional 
events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by 
Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after 
angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and 
tarted up." 

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and 
little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television 
news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened 
journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.") 

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America 
agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore. 

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the 
American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to 
the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have 
any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci 
Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The 
search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on 
and on and on. 

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, 
the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's 
industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that 
need to be addressed by the American people. 

cont...

--- PCBoard (R) v15.3/M 10
 * Origin:  (1:226/600)