In other words, TV teaches that all lifestyles and values are equal, and that there is no clearly defined right and wrong. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, one of the best recent books on the tyranny of television, Neil Postman wonders why nobody has pointed out that television possibly oversteps the instructions in the Bible.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the traditional standards and mores of society came under heavy assault. Indeed, they were blown apart, largely with the help of one's own. There was an air of unreality about many details of daily life. Even important moral questions suffered distortion when they were reduced to TV images. During the Vietnam conflict, there was much graphic violence—soldiers and civilians actually dying—on screen. One scene that shocked the nation was an execution in which the victim was shot in the head with a pistol on prime-time TV. People "tuned in" to the war every night, and controversial issues about the causes, conduct, and resolution of the conflict could be summed up in these superficial broadcasts.
The same phenomenon was seen again in the Gulf War. With stirring background music and sophisticated computer graphics, each network's banner script. read across the screen, "War in the Gulf," as if it were just another T,V program. War isn't a program—it is a dirty, bloody mess. People are killed daily. Yet, television all but teaches that this carnage merely is another diversion, a form. of blockbuster entertainment—the big show with all the international stars present.
In the last years of his life, Malcolm Muggeridge, a pragmatic and print journalist, warned: "Form. the first moment I was in the studio, I felt that it was far from being a good thing. I felt that television would ultimately be inimical to what I most appreciate, which is the expression of truth, expressing your reactions to life in words."
He concluded: "I don't think people are going to be preoccupied with ideas. I think they are going to live in a fantasy world where you don't need any ideas. The one thing that television can't do is express ideas. There is a danger in translating life into an image, and that is what television is doing. It is thus falsifying life. Recorder of what is going on, it is the exact opposite. It cannot convey reality nor does it even want to."
What is the author's attitude towards television?
Ambiguous.
B. Skeptical.
Critical.
D. Appreciative.
The author's study of this syndrome leads him to think that
A. patients must be convinced of the treatment by analysis.
B. patients' sense of guilt may hinder them form. getting well.
C. patients need to know the final explanations of their illness.
D. patients should give up the punishment of suffering from their illness.
What reason does the text suggest when women remain the minority of Internet users?
A. They do not speak English well enough.
B. Men remain the majority of people who control the Internet industry.
C. They do not know how to use computers as well as men do.
D. It does not apply, because this problem does not exist in China.
What needs to occur in order for the goals of the fourth women's conference to be realized?
A. Legislations calling for the advancement of women should be enforced.
B. Need to create a climate that allows and encourages social development on a national scale.
Create new technological opportunities for women in China.
D. Abolish economic barriers between China and the West.