Editorial- The Corruption of a Public Medium

"A vast wasteland"was what Newton Minow called commercial television decades ago when he chaired the Federal Communications Commission. Now, television has deteriorated into "a vast garbage dump," especially the daytime TV that was visited upon me during my recent recovery from surgery. There are small islands of intelligence and creativity, but even with hundreds of new cable channels, really good stuff is rare.

The corruption of TV carries a lesson for libraries, the Internet, and all media or agencies that try to deliver information and entertainment to the public. It teaches us that the marketplace by itself is an insufficient, unhealthy venue in which to nurture and develop public information and entertainment resources. TV tells the story of how deregulation (government neglect) and unrestrained free-market competition can corrupt an influential, almost dominant, public resource. TV's dependence on advertising has forced it to measure its success in revenues and size of market share. The medium must pander to the lowest common denominator to attract the most viewers. Although the airwaves it uses and the spaces over which its transmission lines and channels travel are licensed public property, TV has become a medium without a conscience, with no purpose beyond revenue.

Among hundreds of extreme examples are such grotesques as Jerry Springer and Fox network's screamers Hannity and O'Reilly who can't shake their obsolete addiction to Clinton bashing. Once proud network news broadcasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS are now mostly shallow repetitions of each other. Cost-cutting resulting from its merger with media giant AOL/Time-Warner has devastated CNN as it tries to maintain a slightly higher standard. Then there's "reality TV" and such sensation-driven ego trips as that of the dyspeptic "Judge Judy" Sheindlin and the hapless victims of her make-believe "justice."

What became of TV is a warning signal to any public or private enterprise devoted to informing, educating, or entertaining the masses. The popular lust for the sensational coupled with the equally strong corporate lusts for profits and power are already trying to capture the Internet. Overrun with spam, the Internet is under pressure to become a combination shopping mall and cheap circus. It is an open question whether the net's huge capacity can accommodate substantive information and entertainment side by side with all the junk. An information-literate public might be able to differentiate, but does such a public exist?

As one of the only and last remaining public resources with a mandate to provide the whole story, the full depth of information and entertainment, public libraries must avoid the market-driven popularity trap. Libraries must eschew the easy measures of success that have corrupted television, infected the Internet, and even begun to contaminate traditional print media with potboilers, "newspapers" designed for a TV viewer's attention span, and magazines devoted only to celebrity, sex, gossip, and the freak show side of the human condition.

If libraries allow their success to be measured like television's, by simple counts of popular use, they, too, can be corrupted into shallow channels of sleaze. The way to prevent that is not to ban the shallow and the sleaze and thus marginalize the library. The answer is to make certain the cheap thrills and the commercial "fast food" is balanced by a healthier, more substantial diet.

Achieving such balance requires a strong commitment by librarians to the provision of in-depth information on all subjects and a truly varied collection of entertainment and news in all formats. That means that no source can be fully evaluated by its popularity alone. It must be there for its potential usefulness, its educational value, or its exemplary artistic and creative quality, like a classic poem.

This is an old debate in librarianship. The corruption of television magnifies the library problem and suggests a better solution. Let the library offer something for everyone but pledge to make sure that "everyone" isn't confined only to that largest, market-driven, popular audience. Let's make sure the library also includes all the substance and diversity its users will ultimately need to function as complete and healthy citizens.