Letter to the editor
To the editor:
I have often been quoted by news media, but never so misquoted and distorted. Your article of May 1 ("Rider professor: media addiction is controllable" by Jason Schwartz) misrepresented what I said in fundamental ways. The headline suggests that I think media addiction is real but controllable, when the whole basis of my talk was to show that there is no basis for using the term addiction, since the term is so loosely defined.
I never said television abuse is on the rise; I said television use has risen. I never said many people cannot control their use of TV; I was quoting others who say that, in order to discuss this fear of television. I did not say that claims of addiction "are backed up in studies"; I said that the term addiction has been used in several recent articles (not research reports) in newspapers and magazines. I did not say Ms. Winn has no training, but that she has no training in psychotherapy. This was based on her resume on her own Web site. I did not say that the conclusion of addiction by self-help books is due to blurring the line between addiction and compulsion. My point about compulsion was entirely unrelated to the books.
I did not say addiction is a metaphor used in the 1950s, not now. The very point of my talk was the widespread use of the term "addiction" today which is what the article says in its next sentence, contradicting itself.
Lastly, I did not say, as the article claimed, that the solution to television use is so simple as, "just unplug the TV." That phrase is one that I critiqued as simplistic.
Richard Butsch
Professor
Rider University

