The Sidelines - News Issue: 03/27/03
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Gore criticizes war coverage By Kristin Hall
Former Vice President Al Gore criticized the media and the current administration's war on Iraq and suggested an "unhealthy relationship" between the two at Tuesday's Seigenthaler Lecture. "I admire these journalists who are covering this war who are embedded, but I don't want the owners of the companies they work for to be in bed with the government," Gore said.
Citing the continued deregulation of the media industry as a major problem, Gore held the media responsible for the role it played in the months leading up to the war.
"The relative intolerance of dissent on the part of the media in America led to a completely inadequate debate prior to the beginning of this war," Gore said.
A majority of the lecture dealt with the issue of entertainment media's impact on American communities and society, which is an issue Gore and his wife Tipper know well.
Tipper Gore, who was invited but did not attend the lecture, was a spokeswoman for the Parents' Music Resource Center, the group that effectively persuaded record companies to place parental advisory labels on material considered offensive in 1985.
Gore fielded many questions from the audience about the ethical problems of labeling music as offensive.
"I would not want someone else telling me what they think my child should see or hear," said Laura Fischer, wife of recording industry professor Paul Fischer and mother of two. "I might object to what they think is appropriate for my child."
Gore replied that the label process was a compromise reached between the record companies and the PMRC.
"I think the imperfect voluntary system is better than no system and better than one that would be more intrusive," Gore said.
Many stores like Wal-Mart refuse to stock compact discs with parental advisory labels and, because Wal-Mart is one of the largest music sellers in the country, music consumers have a harder time finding some CDs, which creates indirect but undeniable, censorship.
"I think there may have been some excesses that have taken on the superficial character of de facto censorship," Gore said.
Still, the Gores have many supporters in MTSU's College of Mass Communication.
Rich Barnet, professor of Recording Industry Ethics, teaches about the PMRC and parental advisory labels in class, but has found some students have misconceptions about what Tipper Gore wanted to do.
"I did a lot of research into Tipper Gore and the PMRC," said Barnet, who co-wrote a book called Controversies of the Music Industry with MTSU journalism professor Larry Burriss.
"The more I read about it the more I realized that she wasn't for censorship," Barnet said. "She was for more information."
Throughout the speech, Gore kept referring back to the idea that entertainment mass media is no longer about good music or a good product, but simply making money.
"Parenting is a tough job," Gore said. "And in a mass culture where the dominant source of information ... comes from corporations sending messages into society for commercial purposes to children, that makes it an even tougher job.
"There is an unfettered riot on the part of some giant corporation that wants to make a little bit more money by peddling it to young children, to just cram it down that child's throat as a part of a mass marketing campaign."
Gore touched on a number of problems in American society he considered direct effects of the mass entertainment industry.
His points included over- consumption of material goods by the American public, a childhood obesity epidemic from playing video games and watching television, lack of voter participation and a lack of diverse viewpoints.
"All of this, I think, has been accentuated by an accelerated trend towards the concentration of ownership of the mass entertainment media in the hands of an ever-smaller number of large companies," Gore said.
While it was clear that everyone in the audience, from journalists to mothers to faculty and students, could not agree on the issues brought up, Gore urged for a greater tolerance for diversity of opinion.
"Our country faces dangers we should not be facing because our best protection ... is free and wide-open debate," Gore said.
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