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Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

by Jerry Mander

376 pages, paperback, HarperPerennial, 1978

Praise for Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

"The case against TV has never been made more effectively. It should be read by all addicts and anyone contemplating participationin the desertification of the mind to which TV leads."--Ashley Montagu

"Remarkable, terrifying. . . Mander's arguments completely undercut the usual debates and raise issues nobody can avoid . . . Mander could turn out to be the David who slew the unbeatable media Goliath."--Ernest Callenbach

"The book is great . . . [this] superb treatment unravels and illuminates what even the best of the other critiques have left tangled and murky. Everyone can and should read this work; everyone will be amazed at how much can be learned from it."-- Douglas Dowd

Quotes from Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Argument One--The Mediation of Experience

"As humans have moved into totally artificial environments, our direct contact with an knowledge of the planet has been snapped. Disconnected, like astronauts floating in space, we cannot know up from down or truth from fiction. Conditions are appropriate for the implantation of arbitrary realities. Television is one recent example of this, a serious one, since it greatly accelerates the problem."

Argument Two--The Colonization of Experience

"It is no accident that television has been dominated by a handful of corporate powers. Neither is it accidental that television has been used to re-create human beings into a new form that matches the artificial, commercial environment. A conspiracy of technological and economic factors made this inevitable and continue to do so."

Argument Three--Effects of Television on the Human Being

"Television technology produces neuro-physiological responses in the people who watch it. It may create illness, it certainly produces confusion and submission to external imagery. Taken together, the effects condition for autocratic control."

Argument Four--The Inherent Biases of Television

"Along with the venality of its controllers, the technology of television predetermines the boundaries of its content. Some information can be conveyed completely, some partially, some not at all. The most effective telecommunications are the gross, simplified linear messages and programs which conveniently fit the purposes of the medium's commercial controllers. Television's highest potential is advertising. This cannot be changed. The bias is inherent in the technology."

Table of Contents of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Argument One--The Mediation of Experience

Argument Two--The Colonization of Experience

Argument Three--Effects of Television on the Human Being

Argument Four--The Inherent Biases of Television

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