false 4 3 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 03 09:30:19 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 08 11:20:57 -0700 2007
This book is great and terrible at the same time. The start and end of this book hit it right on the mark - there is a crisis in how information about our Democracy is being shared. It is clearly being manipulated by corporations and government entities. I whole-heartedly give two-thirds of this book a might big thumbs up.

But there are flaws. A minor one is Gore's understanding of communications theory. He keeps repeating as fact the idea that television is a one-way communications channel. While I understand his point since, if you scream at your television, the commercial still will keep playing. The fact is it is a two -way medium. It might be the weakest of two ways, but there are ways to communicate dissatisfaction with television. You can change the channel or simply turn it off. In fact, for the past two years, that's exactly what has been happening. It's true that FOX news is the most popular news channel and that it is making us all mindless drones. Gore's book correctly points out that most news has leaned to the right on most issues, but what he fails to add are two interesting nuggets about Fox's viewer ship - while it is the highest of all the networks, its audience is much smaller than even the third-place network 10 years ago. In fact, television viewer ship is at an all time low when compared to the past 25 years. That's a clear message from the people to TV saying "We hate what you are doing." Ergo, it is a two-way communications model.

However, that's a minor complaint. My biggest complaint about this book is the middle of it. Gore repeatedly complains about the Bush administration and how it has manipulated the media. I dislike the Bush administration and do believe they are all treasonous hacks who should be imprisoned for life, but by harping on it constantly through a great portion of the book, Gore almost makes it seem like the Bush administration is solely responsible for all that is wrong with Democracy in America today. His book would have been better served if he also had used equal examples of how Democrats as well as the two houses of Congress and the Supreme Court as well as local governments have really manipulated the system or just dropped the ball. Gore does not do this. He makes it sound like Bush's cronies have warped the entire system and that before Bush's appointment by the Supreme Court in 2000, everything worked perfectly fine. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my humble opinion. The system of communications in Democracy was far out of whack before Bush even decided to run for president and I think I could argue that Bush has gotten away with a lot of crap over the years because the system was broken before he broke it even further.

While I respect Gore's opinions in this book and believe that his complaints have merit, he would have really put himself in a better light and made this a much better book if he had expressed some of that neutrality that he complains is missing from modern communications today.]]>