[00:00.00]Text Unreality of TV
[00:04.49]Dr.Heinrich Applebaum recently completed a study
[00:09.85]on the effects of television on children.
[00:14.21]It is not about violence,but about
[00:18.26]how television gives children a false sense of reality.
[00:23.82]Dr.Applebaum told me,
[00:27.59]"The greatest danger of television is that it presents a world to children
[00:33.75]that doesn't exist,and leads them to expect things that never happen."
[00:41.01]"I don't understand,Doctor,"I said.
[00:45.27]"Well,let me give you one example.
[00:49.71]Have you ever seen a television show where a person in a car doesn't immediately
[00:56.37]find a parking place on the very first try?"
[01:00.92]"Come to think of it,"I said,"I haven't."
[01:05.78]"Not only is there always a parking place,
[01:10.92]but the driver doesn't even have to back into it.
[01:16.17]There are two parking spaces for him when he needs one.
[01:21.74]Children are being led to believe that when they grow up
[01:26.70]they will always be able to find a parking place available when
[01:32.45]and where they want it.
[01:36.00]"I never thought of it,but it's true.
[01:40.36]What else do they show on television which gives a distorted picture of the real world?"
[01:46.84]"Have you noticed that whenever a person walks out of a restaurant or
[01:52.69]office building and says to the doorman,'Get me a taxi,'
[01:58.94]the taxi immediately arrives?
[02:03.30]I have never seen a TV show where the doorman has said,
[02:08.44]'I'm sorry.I can't get you a taxi.You'd better take the bus.'"
[02:14.69]"Of course,"I said,"I never noticed that.
[02:19.73]There is always a yellow taxi waiting somewhere off the TV screen."
[02:26.21]"Now",said Applebaum,"have you ever said to a taxi driver,
[02:32.97]'Follow that car and don't lose him'?
[02:37.23]"Not really."
[02:40.10]"Well,if you had,the driver would have told you not to talk nonsense.
[02:47.47]No taxi driver wants to follow another car
[02:52.62]because that means he's going to get into trouble.
[02:57.45]But on TV every taxi driver looks as if he had nothing better to do
[03:04.58]than to drive 90 miles an hour through rain-swept street
[03:10.75]trying to keep up with a carful of gangsters.
[03:16.08]And the worst thing is that the kids believe it.
[03:21.43]"What else have you discovered?"
[03:25.09]"Kids have a false sense of what emergency wards of hospitals are really like.
[03:32.56]On TV shows they take a kid to an emergency ward and
[03:38.02]four doctors come rushing down to bandage his leg.
[03:43.87]In a real life situation
[03:48.02]the kid would be sitting on the bench for two hours before he even saw a nurse.
[03:55.18]On TV there always happens to be a hospital bed available when a kid needs it.
[04:02.94]What the kids in this country don't know is that sometimes
[04:08.58]you have to wait three days to get a hospital bed
[04:13.75]and then you have to pay 500 dollars before they give it to you.
[04:20.91]Applebaum said the cruelest lie of all
[04:25.95]is when TV shows a lawyer defending someone innocent of a crime.
[04:32.90]"On the screen the lawyer spends day and night looking for evidence to prove the person is innocent.
[04:40.35]The defendant might say,But I'm innocent.
[04:45.20]The lawyer would say,So what?
[04:50.48]I can't afford to find that out.I'm not Perry Mason.
[04:56.65]Then what you're saying,Dr.Applebaum,is that
[05:01.40]it isn't the violence on TV but the unreality that is doing harm to children."
[05:09.66]"Exactly.Even the advertisements are harmful.
[05:15.12]Children are led to believe that when they grow up
[05:20.18]if they use a certain mouthwash they'll find the mate of their dreams.
[05:27.63]When they don't find him or her after washing their mouth all night,
[05:33.19]they fall into a difficult situation and many of them never come out of it." |