video:Olbermann hosts Al Gore on the abuses of 'mass media persuasion'

[cal04]

(snip)
Olbermann then turned to his guest, former Vice-President Al Gore, asking him whether he agrees with Sheehan. Gore hestitated before answering but finally said that he agrees in part, in that he believes our "national conversation" is dominated by trivialities and "very cleverly constructed propagandistic messaging that really doesn't take logic and reason into account."

When Olbermann pursued the point further, asking Gore to comment on Sheehan's sense that the country doesn't want change, and the broader sense that attempting to engage in a dialog is pointless, Gore responded by pointing to the Internet as something that is bringing back a "public marketplace of ideas that is more accessible to individuals"

Picking up one of the major themes of his book, The Assault on Reason, Gore stated, "The Internet does invite a robust, multi-way conversation that I think is already beginning to serve as a corrective for some of the abuses of the mass media persuasion campaigns that brought us the invasion of Iraq and the ignoring of the climate crisis."

Democracy, said Gore, is something that comes naturally to human beings, but when the conversation becomes one-way -- as it does when dominated by mass media like television -- and is diverted into propaganda, people come to feel they have no way to be heard. "We are more vulnerable to these kinds of sophisticated efforts to bypass reason and logic," Gore stated. The corrective to this, he insisted, is that "We the People must reclaim the integrity of our democracy."

(snip)
The following video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast on May 29.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Olbermann_hosts_Al_Gore_assault_on_0529.html

[Kurovski]

1. K&R. (nt)

[janx]

2. Same here. K&R

[Kurovski]

3. Kick. (nt)