TV and viewers: a constant conflict

Abstract

This paper analyzes how television often disappoints the viewer, although he or she will anyway continue watching what he or she did not mean to watch. The author asserts that there is a deep lack of knowledge of the medium, whereas television is affected by prepotency, by the tendency to abuse freedom of speech, by the lack of a more profound self-conscience of the great social responsibility it entails to be a source of role models, of cultural trends. This paper reaches the conclusion that it is necessary to open a wider space for the study of mass media in the school curricula, to create Self-regulatory Boards and Audiovisual Councils to make recommendations about contents and about the sector itself, and to insist on the social responsibility of the medium..