Is viewing a threat to democracy?

While consumers enjoy the technological advances that make television images more realistic and bring them news around the clock, the medium may have a dangerous impact on their lives and even could threaten democracy, contends Eric M. Kramer, assistant professor of communication, University of Oklahoma. He says the images seen on TV sets have a tremendous power to influence people. Modern Western culture has developed what he calls a "videocentric" prejudice--a belief that what is seen on television is real.

"This videocentric prejudice is dangerous because we will defend our reality to the death," Kramer maintains, pointing to the violent Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King trial as an example. "If I show you the video of Rodney King being beaten, there would be no argument [that the officers beating him were guilty], but as we saw in the trial, there is an argument. Because the camera is sectoral, like our eyes, we don't see what is happening on the left or right. And we don't see what happened before King was apprehended or what happened after the tape stopped."

Seeing isn't always believing, and people need to be cautious about confusing facts with knowledge. "Facts are never...