[8899] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
What Will It Take To Educate TV About the Net?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sat Dec 11 03:33:53 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 13:50:13 -0700 (MST)
Last night, ABC Television 'Prime Time Live' - which a lot of
on-liners saw who are concerned about this distorted press reporting about
the net(s) - in Vic Sussman's words 'did it again.' Sussman is a senior
editor of USNews an World Report which is now committed to reporting
telecommunications in serious and positive way, and is on Compserve in full
text, with editors and reporters in feedback mode.
It was about how singles meet and fall in love and how kids can
download naughty GIF pictures. They even showed a nude GIF coming across a
kids screen with the naughty body parts blocked out. With all the power of
television to make such scenes shocking and communicate to parents that
they should keep their kids the hell away off the net.
Then it had a religous right figure arguing for tighter control of
BBSs and the net.
Yellow TV journalism that does more damage in one night to the future
of the NII than all the print publications together.
But the print mainstream press is *beginning* to get it. For a lot of
reasons, not the least of which is the osmosis effect of reporters and
editors who use wordprocessors and networks - the coin of the net - to file
and research their stories personally learning what it is all about through
extended experience with it. (sooner or later everybody seems to 'get it')
Not so network television. Which is not only years behind print in
getting it, but with the competitive pressures of cable versus network
television have increasingly resorted to tabloid tv journalism to attract
viewers.
So my question. What is it going to take to educate the tv
establishment in this medium?
Cause if they don't get educated soon, and start using their creative
talents to make the significant, interesting, rather than the fringe
titillation, significant in terms of public policy. Today SEGA and video
games before Congress. Tomorrow GIF files and the whole Internet.
(I have a basic solution - for parents and educators which can go a
long way to 'solve' the problem of child access to net pornography - which
is simply to push BBS's or user-configerable client machines as 'front
ends' to the Internet, with well developed tools to empower the parent or
teachers to selectively block access to WHATEVER they don't want to
see/read. Similar to the chipset those who are concerned about television
violence, which can be programmed by parents the same way. According to
their *own* value system - whatever that might be. And let the producers
put out anything they want. But empower the end users to automatically NOT
see anything they choose. Which solution for TV of course, is being
protested by the tv industry who just wants to make a buck. But before such
a basic solution is spread very far, in this mindless rush for everyone to
be *directly* on the Internet as if it is the 'only' solution to net
access, the public policy issues of child access to pornography is likely
to reach critical mass and involve Congress. UNLESS the responsible
elements of the TV industry get educated about the online world.)
So the question is - how to educate producers, creative staff,
anchors of TV? For they are conspicuous by their absence in the public
parts of the net. And unless they start waking up to the story potential
OTHER than that of the tiresome treatment of the net-bizzare, there is
going to be big problems for the NII. And it won't be the sole fault of the
public moralists - who know even less about the net than TV.
