A critique of television made by a successful practitioner of mainstream television news--mainly at PBS, to be sure, but a familiar mass-media figure nevertheless--can be interpreted not as a rejection of television per se but as a plea for reform, based on the way that it has evolved. Even though MacNeil says that the nation has "surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling" (2), what is really behind this criticism is not that it is a medium for selling, or even that what is sold has a perceived value because it is new. Rather, the criticism is driven by the fact that that the sales message is built around content and presentation of trivial and superficial. What is complex or requires thought is either not present on television or marginalized away from what is commercial, i.e., salable.
In the current period, which is to say the 200-plus-channel world of cable and satellite television, the fading "appetite for complexity only dimly perceived" (MacNeil 2) is complicated by another factor, which is that triviality and superficiality are accompanied more and more by confrontation and high volume, not only in fictional comedy and drama but also--and more significantly, where the issue is one of the civility level of society--in information programming. Complicating such programming is that it is (more exactly purports to be) a public service, built around issues of political, social, and legal significance.
As MacNeil says (2), the world "has become more complex, not less," but after all of this complication of programming and nation alike, the effect and indeed apparent objective of much news-and-information programming is to make a project of asking for--make that insisting on--simple answers to complex questions. A good deal of news-and-information programming features commentary by current and former public officials, pundits, experts, scholars, and journalists, who might be considered well qualified to provide though...