Vividness of TV and Newspaper

To understand the final reason why the news marketplace of ideas dominated by television is so different from the one that emerged in the world dominated by the printing press, it is important to distinguish the quality of vividness experienced by television viewers from the “vividness” experienced by readers. I believe that the vividness experienced in the reading of words is automatically modulated by the constant activation of the reasoning centers of the brain that are used in the process of concreating the representation of reality the author has intended. By contrast, the visceral vividness portrayed on television has the capacity to trigger instinctual responses similar to those triggered by reality itself—and without being modulated by logic, reason, and reflective thought.

The simulation of reality accomplished in the television medium is so astonishingly vivid and compelling compared with the representations of reality conveyed by printed words that it signifies much more than an incremental change in the way people consume information. Books also convey compelling and vivid representations of reality, of course. But the reader actively participates in the conjuring of the reality the book’s author Is attempting to depict. Moreover, the parts of the human brain that are central to the reasoning process are continually activated by the very act of reading printed words: Words are composed of abstract symbols—letters— that have no intrinsic meaning themselves until they are strung together into recognizable sequences.

Television, by contrast, presents to its viewers a much more fully formed representation of reality—without requiring the creative collaboration that words have always demanded.