Quality of life suffers as noise encroaches on shared environments

In the first systematic look at boom cars, outdoor TV, and other “captive-audience” media, a book released this month from Algora Publishing in New York City says a values conflict similar to the one over secondhand smoke is growing because of audio and video technologies that increasingly take away our ability to choose the media we consume.

Written by Robert Freedman, a 25-year veteran communications professional, Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy looks at noise through the filter of captive-audience media and finds that continued growth of media that doesn’t respect personal boundaries is sparking a values war similar to that over secondhand smoke.

“Noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people haven’t been aware that it has an impact on their health,” an environmental official says in the book.

“The ‘outdoor entertainment’ equipment pushed by the home electronics industry in the form of outdoor loudspeakers and televisions for the porch and patio makes us wonder, what next?” says Karen Orr of the League of Conservation Voters. “Mega bass boom systems for the riding lawnmower?”

“You used to reliably move to the suburbs and find peace and quiet,” says Les
Blomberg of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Montpelier, Vt, in an interview reproduced in the book. “But now “we’ve made our suburbs noisy. We can’t all buy 1,000 acres and hide in the middle of it.”

The book quotes Ted Rueter, president of Noise Free America, on the efforts of his and other organizations against cars with ultra-loud stereos. “Boom car owners think they’ll beat us down into submission. Their culture is violent, vicious, and hate-filled.”

The book is the first to look at noise—both visual and audio noise—through the filter of audience captivity: the intentional effort by commercial interests to impose noise on consumers in such a way that they can’t escape it. Among these efforts is the move to introduce TV to settings in which consumers are forced to watch it such as taxis, buses, elevators, gas stations, street corners, school classrooms, and every category of retail setting.

“The minute I see TV at a checkout, I tell the manager, ‘Watch me. I’m about to walk out of your store because I can’t stand TV,” one person says in the book. “You won’t see me again until all the other stores in the area have the same damn thing and I must put up with it or starve.’ No, no, don’t try to tell me how most people seem to like it. I’m not most people, I hate it, and I’m leaving now, empty-handed.”

“I will not go to stations that have TVs on gas pumps,” another person says. “As a result, I have not been to my neighborhood gas station in months. I can only hope other people are doing the same thing. If not, this sort of irritating constant sales bombardment will start going on everywhere.”

“I serve notice to all those who force me to see their ads by interfering with my elective reading. Never would I purchase your product. Cha-ching. That’s the sound of the cash drawer slamming on your fingers.

The book talks about the difference between audio and video “push” media and traditional “pull” media such as print. With “pull” media, the audience decides when and where to consume content; with “push” media, the content pushes out to people whether they want to consume it or not, creating a suffocating environment for those who are unwilling to be made a captive.

The book looks at two landmark captive-audience Supreme Court cases, Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak (1952) and Kovacs v. Cooper (1949). In the first case, a divided Court confirmed a public transit agency’s right to pipe in commercial media to a captive audience of commuters. Although the case didn’t bar audience captivity, William O. Douglas issued a stinging dissent that raised unsettled questions about audience captivity, and Felix Frankfurter abstained, saying he found audience captivity so personally distasteful that he couldn’t trust himself to rule on the case objectively.

In the second case, the court confirmed a municipality’s right to outlaw the broadcast of captive audio content on a public street, thus siding with critics of audience captivity.

Noise Wars also looks at the growth of “annoyancetech,” a new category of devices that consumers are using to fight back against audience captivity. Devices such as TV-B-Gone are being used to disable TV in places where people can’t escape it.

Here’s what readers are saying about the book:

“This lively and well-researched work talks about how all this noise affects our civil liberties and our peace of mind. . . . Freedman appends William O. Douglas’s wise comments on the matter, “Compulsion which comes from circumstances can be as real as compulsion which comes from command,” and says fellow Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter was so angry about the issue that he didn’t feel he could render a fair opinion at all. . . . Freedman brings his own contemplative voice to the question, quoting philosophers as well as jurists. And adding a dollop of writer Ray Bradbury and composer John Cage for good measure.”—Roy Harris, Jr.

“Written with a deep understanding of the role of media in our lives by a veteran award-winning print and Web editor, the book is valuable for several reasons. It confounds the skeptics by marshaling the evidence of noise pollution’s physiological and psychological effects (up to and including suicide and murderous acts). It explains First Amendment case law, and it doesn’t simply bash the ‘evil corporations’ but explains the economic pressures that are leading them into captive audience business ventures.” —Chris Wright

“The book has excellent research behind it. As I read the book I stopped and thought about all the media that intrudes on my life, as well as the media I invite into my life…. And the unintended consequences that result from the bombardment of noise.” —Elisa Robyn

“While most of us are focusing on the transition away from the days of push media (i.e., being forced to watch programs on a limited number of channels), another–more insidious delivery of media–is taking place right before our eyes. Freedman refers to it as “compulsory media,” music and audio advertisements that are piped in at the grocery store, the television that plays above the gas pump, or the commercial that runs when you enter a cab. Freedman does an effective job of calling attention to the problem and arming us to do something about it.”—Steve Roll

“Our freedom is at risk as more and more outside media infringes on our personal space, on our shared public spaces. Our right to choose is transgressed, lost. We become a captive audience, against our will, to television advertising, boom cars, muzak, etc. And this is especially the point of the book: the scale of annoyance in the breach isn’t important; It’s the fact that there is a breach in our right to choose is what matters.”—Narshe Colliery