Does heavy TV viewing push people towards more liberal opinions? Or is it the impact of pre-existing leftist attitudes that leads viewers to invest more of their lives on television?
 
Analysts may argue about causation, but there's no real doubt about correlation: an important new study from the Culture and Media Institute shows that those who describe themselves as "heavy" TV viewers embrace distinctly liberal attitudes on a range of crucial issues, placing them well to the left of those who report "light" TV viewing.

 
This investigation classified "heavy" TV viewers as those who devoted four hours (or more) per evening to watching the tube--and found 25% of the public fit that description. "Light" TV viewers (22.5% of the sample) were those who watched one hour per night or less. In other words, the self-described "heavy" viewers consumed, on average, more than four times the amount of nightly television as the "light" viewers.

These starkly contrasting TV habits linked directly to dramatically different attitudes in the two groups. For instance, heavy TV viewers proved far more likely to agree with the statement "the government needs to get bigger" than were light viewers (26% to 12%). They were also more likely to endorse the idea that "government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits for everyone" (64% to 43%), much more likely to declare themselves "pro choice" on abortion (57% to 43%).

At the study's Washington, D.C. unveiling on June 6th, I delivered the keynote address and offered three possible explanations for the connection between leftist perspective and TV addiction (anyone who watches more than four hours every night almost certainly deserves the designation "addict").

1)    First, and most obvious, the heavy television watcher gives so much attention to the tube (a minimum of 28 hours per week, remember) that he'll find scant time to spare for real-world relationships. Any individual who commits the bulk of his waking, non-working hours to his TV set will find it difficult to take part  in the "little platoons of society" (family and neighborhood associations) that Edmund Burke cites as essential to liberty and conservatism. On the other hand, lonely people with few meaningful personal relationships will turn to the TV set to fill the empty spaces in their lives.

Either way, the isolation associated with hours and hours in front of the tube leads to liberal values and viewpoints. In every election, single people prove vastly more likely to vote for Democrats than do married people: Republican Presidential candidates have won majorities of married voters even in elections where Democrats proved victorious overall (as with Bob Dole's ill-starred race in 1996). People who see themselves as alone in the world, with no network of spouses or fellow congregants, frequently turn to government as a source of support and comfort--just as they'd turn to television as a source of phony companionship.

2) Television news and televised entertainment contribute to a sense that we live in a dark, dysfunctional, alarming world--and that perception reinforces the core concepts of liberalism. The left depends on a gloomy vision of the present and future--how else could its adherents demand sweeping, ambitious government initiatives to redistribute wealth, stop global warming, rescue the poor, repeal racism and homophobia, restructure health care, and so forth? By the same token, television demands constant reminders of bad news and conflict. News broadcasts ("If it bleeds, it leads") rely on violence, crime, natural disasters, scary prospects, horrifying epidemics, economic setbacks, and ecological terrors.

When it comes to entertainment, TV shows (like movies and novels, for that matter) seldom focus on productive, stable, loving family units where the members obey the law, and pay their taxes. Instead, the 28 hours a week (minimum) viewed by heavy TV watchers amounts to 28 hours a week of dysfunction and conflict--with the desperate competition for viewer attention (among literally hundreds of cable channels, video games, DVDs, and networks) promoting a bias for the bizarre. This in turn connects to a sense that the world's gone mad, and requires some sort of radical (usually leftist) governmental initiative to avert looming apocalypse.

3). By its very nature, TV (like all other visual media) relies on image rather than ideas, superficiality rather than substance. Television connects and communicates by stirring the emotions, not by offering profound thoughts or probing analysis. Immediacy represents the medium's principal virtue: TV broadcasts can put you "right there," experiencing dramatic events in the very moments that they unfold, but they never do well at giving a sense of context or continuity. The television emphasis on immediacy and impatience (when people get bored, they quickly change the channel) feeds the nation's most destructive epidemic: the dreaded "Do Something Disease": the conviction that every problem demands immediate activism in order to make us feel better, regardless of whether the gestures in question actually provide a long-term improvement in the situation.

Liberalism cherishes such meaningless feel-good notions. The Democrats feel outraged at the rise in gas prices, so they demand a satisfying and vindictive "wind-fall profits tax" on the greedy oil companies--never mind the fact that raising taxes on an industry always makes the prices of its product go up, not down. Like the tacky ending of a supposedly uplifting TV show, liberal programs emphasize feelings more than consequences, good intentions more than good results.

In describing the common ground between the TV medium and the liberal world-view, I haven't once cited the long-standing (and highly credible) charges of leftist media bias.  For the purposes of this study, it doesn't matter how tasteful or admirable the viewing selections: four hours (or more) per night will bring the same doleful impact--leading to more isolation and less durable and significant real-world relationships, a more dire perspective on the world around us along with a corresponding sense of desperation and powerlessness, and a superficial, impatient, emotional emphasis on immediacy and feeling, rather than context and consequence.

In other words, the problem with heavy television viewing isn't the low quality of what we watch (though God knows the quality is low) but rather the high quantity. That means that the most important response to the study at hand (especially for those who want to raise their children free of the taint of liberal pathologies) isn't to push for supply-side solutions from mass media, but to deploy demand solutions for every American family.

We may remain unable to impact what the TV industry makes, but we can certainly change what each of us takes--and resolve to count ourselves among the connected, clear thinking light viewers, rather than the addled, lonely, and dysfunctional heavy consumers of the pop culture's principal form of mindless and misleading diversion.