NASHVILLE - The "quasi-hypnotic influence" of television in America has fostered a complacent nation that is a danger to democracy, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday.
Gore, speaking on "Media and Democracy" at Middle Tennessee State University, told attendees the decline of newspapers as the country's dominant method of communication leaves average Americans without an outlet for scholarly debate.
"Our democracy is suffering in an age when the dominant medium is not accessible to the average person and does not lend itself most readily to the conveyance of complex ideas about self-governance," Gore said. "Instead it pushes toward a lowest common denominator."
Gore said the results of that inaccessibility are reflected most prominently in the changed priorities of the country's elected officials, who feel that debating important issues is "relatively meaningless today. How do they spend their time instead? Raising money to buy 30-second television commercials."
Students and members of the community filled the 235-seat auditorium for Gore's appearance, and several hundred more watched his speech on a big-screen monitor set up in the building's lobby. It was the first of two lectures Gore has scheduled at MTSU as part of the "American Democracy Project for Civil Engagement," an effort to launch a national discussion on the "vigor of the national democracy."
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/state/article/0,1406,KNS_348_2421025,00.html