Second, constant exposure to TV over a period of time, and the sharing of TV stimuli by everyone in the society, creates a reservoir of common media experiences that are stored in our brains. In a group situation, commonly shared media experiences may overpower the previous non-media experiences of each member of the group as the basis on which a collective response will be formulated. The same is true for interpersonal encounters that must later be communicated to many people. It is easier to explain or justify action based on some experience we share with others. For example, in a political demonstration, there may be a flare-up between a policeman and one demonstrator. Seeing this, other demonstrators may refer the incident to the body of stored personal experiences where similar incidents took place. Their previous personal experiences will all be different, and therefore are not likely to foster an instantaneous collective response. However, if they refer what they see to previous media experiences of seeing demonstrations (commonly shared by all who watch TV), a collective reaction is more likely. Furthermore, since TV tends to show violent moments in demonstrations, the stored media experiences of people in the crowd makes violence commonly available to everyone in the group—as an appropriate collective reaction.
In addition, media depiction of the good life as typical throughout our society contradicts the everyday experiences of many people. This can be an element conducive to violent behavior, when people who do not experience the good life attempt to get what everyone has. Here too, constant exposure to TV makes certain solutions to this dilemma commonly available. The important point here is that we will get nowhere if we try to establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between TV and violence in society. TV has a very mild effect in one sense—it makes certain knowledge available to us. The strength of the effect lies in TV’s ability to make this knowledge available to everyone.
Truth is a Print Ethic
Truth, as a social value, is a product of print. In preliterate tribal cultures, the truth or falsity of a statement is not as important as whether it conforms to the religious and social beliefs of the society. Similarly, during the greater part of the Middle Ages, an imprimatur by the Church superseded any question of truth or validity regarding printed material. As print became a mass medium, literacy emerged as a social value. In order to learn about the world and communicate this knowledge to others, a person had to be literate. But men soon realized that print information, unlike other sensory data, could be true or false, fiction or nonfiction. Philosophers and men of letters spent a great deal of time and energy on this question, and truth emerged as an important social value (though the “white lie” was reserved for those occasions when another social value took precedence over truth). They did not recognize that truth is a particular problem in one medium of communication: the printed word.
No one ever asked of a Steichen photograph, “Is it true or false?” And no one would apply a truth standard in analyzing a Picasso painting. Yet no one would argue that a painting or photograph cannot communicate important and powerful meaning. Likewise, the question of truth is largely irrelevant when dealing with electronic media content. People do not watch Bonanza to find out about the Old West. So it makes no sense to ask if the program is a true depiction of that historical period. And we could not ask whether a children’s cartoon program is true.
We can and should ask about the effects of television and radio programming. Electronic communication deals primarily with effects. The problem is that no “grammar” for electronic media effects has been devised. Electronic media have been viewed merely as extensions of print, and therefore subject to the same grammar and values as print communication. The patterned auditory and visual information on television or radio is not “content.” Content is a print term, subject to the truth-falsity issue. Auditory and visual information on television or radio are stimuli that affect a viewer or listener. As stimuli, electronically mediated communication cannot be analyzed in the same way as print “content.” A whole new set of questions must be asked, and a new theory of communication must be formulated.
The problem of applying a truth-falsity paradigm to electronic communication is illustrated most clearly in the case of advertising. Periodically, the Federal Trade Commission clamps down on advertisers, demanding that they substantiate the truthfulness of their claims. How, they ask, can three different headache remedies claim to get into the bloodstream the fastest? And how can every brand of toothpaste claim to make teeth whiter than any other brand of toothpaste? Advertising agencies, forked tongue in cheek, respond by assuring the FTC that truth is essential if they are to convince the public to buy a product. Ironically, the ad agencies are very much concerned with truth, but they simply want to appear truthful. However, both the FTC and the agencies are dealing with an irrelevant issue. Neither understands the structure of electronic communication. They are dealing with TV and radio as extensions of print media, with the principles of literacy setting the ground rules for truth, honesty, and clarity.
Many advertising agencies believe that if a claim is accepted as true, the product will be considered better than all others in the field, thus increasing sales. The continuing proliferation of words like “best,” “most,” “cleanest,” “purest,” “whitest,” etc., testify to the agency proclivity for leaning on a truth image. For years, the agencies produced ads that made incredible claims for products, and that created arbitrary product differences where none in fact existed. The effect of such advertising was to produce a general cynicism in the public mind regarding all radio and television advertising. Perhaps to combat this, many large agencies recently adopted a policy of faking “straight talk” in commercials. That is, since the effect of their commercials was to create a negative attitude toward the product being advertised, maybe they could use a tone of voice that would sound truthful. Of course, the result has not been “straight talk,” but announcers who sound like they are faking “straight talk.”
The only important question for the FTC and advertising agencies alike is: What are the effects of electronic media advertising? For an advertiser, the issue of concern should center on how the stimuli in a commercial interact with a viewer’s real-life experiences and thus affect his behavior in a purchasing situation. Here the key is to connect products to the real lives of human beings. As long as the connection is made in a deep way, and as long as the experience evoked by the commercial is not in conflict with the experience of the product, purchase is possible, or probable. At the moment, agencies could skirt an end run right around the FTC by producing commercials that get to the heart of the human use of products. People take aspirin because they need relief from a headache, not because it has monodyocycolate in it. People enjoy soup for much simpler reasons than the Heinz commercials would lead one to believe. Eating Heinz soup does not give one the feeling that he is part of a 102-piece band riding on top of a gargantuan can of Heinz soup. Commercials that do not connect and resonate with real-life experiences build an incredibility gap for everyone who uses the medium.
From the FTC point of view, “telling the truth” should be the least important social concern. If electronic communication deals with effects, then government agencies responsible for safeguarding public well-being should concern themselves with understanding the effects of a commercial, and preventing those effects that are not in the public interest. A recent television commercial for children’s aspirin was 100 percent truthful by the most rigid FTC standard, but the effect of the commercial was to make children feel that aspirin is something to take when they want to have a good time. The commercial clearly demonstrates that truth is a print ethic, not a standard for ethical behavior in electronic communication. In addition, the influence of electronic media on print advertising (particularly the substitution of photographic techniques for copy to achieve an effect) raises the question of whether truth is any longer an issue in magazine or newspaper ads.
At present, we have no generally agreed-upon social