ur reality have been presented as
truth and mistaken for fact. These narratives, and their tellers,
compete for believers in two ways: through the content of the stories
and through the medium or tools through which the stories are told.
The content of a story might be considered the what, where the
technology through which the story is transmitted can be considered
the how. In moments when new technologies of storytelling develop, the
competitive value of the medium can be more influential than the value
of the message.

Exclusive access to the how of storytelling lets a storyteller
monopolise the what. In ancient times, people were captivated by the
epic storyteller as much for his ability to remember thousands of
lines of text as for the actual content of the Iliad or Odyssey.
Likewise, a television program or commercial holds us in its spell as
much through the magic of broadcasting technology as its script.
Whoever has power to get inside that magic box has the power to write
the story we end up believing.

We don't call the stuff on television 'programming' for nothing. The
people making television are not programming our TV sets or their
evening schedules; they are programming us. We use the dial to select
which program we are going to receive and then we submit to it. This
is not so dangerous in itself; but the less understanding and control
we have over exactly what is fed to us through the tube, the more
vulnerable we are to the whims of our programmers.

For most of us, what goes on in the television set is magic. Before
the age of VCRs and camcorders it was even more so. The creation and
broadcast of a television program was a magic act. Whoever has his
image in that box must be special. Back in the 1960s, Walter Cronkite
used to end his newscast with the assertion: "and that's the way it
is". It was his ability to appear in the magic box that gave him the
tremendous authority necessary to lay claim to the absolute truth.

I have always recoiled when this rhetorical advantage is exploited by
those who have the power to monopolise a medium. Consider, for
example, a scene in the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi.
Luke and Hans Solo have landed on an alien moon and are taken prisoner
by a tribe of little furry creatures called Ewoks. In an effort to win
their liberation, Luke's two robots tell the Ewoks the story of their
heroes' struggle against the dark forces of the Empire. C3PO, the
golden andr