Debate on Television: The Spectacle of Deliberation

This article considers the potential of television as a public space in which democratic debate might be instigated, stimulated, or promoted. It asks whether television could do a better job at opening up intelligent public debate—and how opportunities to do so have been constrained historically by policies of political timidity. It considers three types of pseudo-debate commonly organized by television producers and concludes by arguing that television’s most significant capacity as a communication medium may well be its capacity to produce a civic mix between forms and techniques of popular culture and ideas relevant to democratic public deliberation