Olbermann's Suspension of Rationality about 24
Series: A View to Media
From: Paul Levinson
Length: 00:03:55
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Piece Description
Keith Olbermann's claim that 24 is an example of Fox trying to frighten the American people, to help Bush rally support for his stance on terror, confuses fiction and fact - or, the capacity of rational people to tell the difference between them. As the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out two hundred years ago, humans are capable of responding to fiction, even though we know full well that it is not real. Olbermann's attack on 24 is little more than a call for censorship, simply because he dislikes the political valence of the network that airs the show. An open society should be tolerant of fiction, and respect the capacity of people to enjoy it without subscribing to this or that political opinion.
2 Comments
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Review of Olbermann's Suspension of Rationality about 24Paul Levinson skillfully raises the question of commentators creating controversy as an end in itself.
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Timing and Cues
suggested host intro:
long version: Paul Levinson is Professor and Chair of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, author of 12 books, and a frequent guest on television and radio news shows.
short version: Paul Levinson is Professor and Chair of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University
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ken girardey
Posted on January 18, 2007 at 08:37 AM | Permalink
Review of Olbermann's Suspension of Rationality about 24
The narrator seems to be saying that people are generally able to seperate truth from fiction. If this is true, then why even bring this subject up? If the people who listen to Keith Olberman are able to seperate fact from lies, why then attack the Olberman for his opinion? I think the facts differ from what is being discussed here. I don't think a 200 year old review of Coleridge about fictional poetry has anything to do with the state of modern day society which especially in America has become used to sitting on the sofa and absorbing all the hype being sold to them. They used to tell us cigarettes were good also! Alot of dead people weren't able to seperate fact from fiction. They sold us the belief that we were under imminent danger of being attacked by Iraq....alot of people are dead and our treasury is gone because "the people" were NOT able to seperate truth from fiction. So I believe that what Mr. Olberman is only trying to say is, why add fuel to the fire of a paranoid and frightened society anyway? Perhaps what Mr. Levinson is saying is that people in society 200 years ago were more able to seperate fact from fiction because they "read" and thought more with their own intellect. Today it has become so much easier to just let the television do our "thinking"....