Thursday, June 17, 2004
'Politainment'
Jeff Jarvis looks at the political biases of various forms of media/entertainment.
He's on target with most of his analysis. I disagree, however, with his thoughts on television:
|
He's on target with most of his analysis. I disagree, however, with his thoughts on television:
TV -- outside of the news (let's not get into that), isn't TV rather apolitical? Oh, sure, there's your random anti-Reagan miniseries and the message snuck in here and there. But I think this will be the next frontier of political entertainment. See Al Gore's new network. It won't be as overtly political as Air America, they say, but it will have a world view, of course. And I'll be you'll see some efforts to create the Norman Lear or the anti-Lear in politically hued sitcoms and dramas.Television leans left without a doubt. Murphy Brown, Ellen, The West Wing -- you're never going to see critics assail them for pushing right-wing ideas. And then there's MTV -- the bastion of liberal propoganda, as well as the Left's agenda-setter for today's youth -- which is a category all by itself. I can think of one show, 7th Heaven, that regularly displays Conservative values, but it's buried in the trash heap that is the WB. TV, as Jarvis says, can be "apolitical" to a degree, but it's certainly not devoid of politics, and when agendas start creeping into programming, they're almost always of the liberal persuasion.
Longhorn Sites
Astros Sites