Along with the radio, television has become the primary means for broadcast communication and entertainment. As such it calls for ethical and political assessment. What follows will thus focus on such assessments, noting a spectrum of views running from positive to negative in relation to both content and practice.

Background

The word television, a hybrid compound of the Greek tele (distance) and the English vision, names a technological invention from the 1920s in which electromagnetic waves are used to control a beam of electrons scanning a cathode-ray tube so as to create an image. The initially distinctive feature of this technology was that, unlike motion pictures but like radio, it could be personalized for home or individual use. Over the course of more than half a century the electronics underwent continuous modification: Vacuum tubes were replaced with transistors and then integrated circuits; the black-and-white cathode-ray tube became colored...