Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean '71, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke Tuesday at Yale about the shortcomings of today's print media and the importance of an ethical media in a working democracy.

In the symposium, titled "The Media and the Election: A Postmortem," Dean stressed corporate ownership of the media and the increased focus on entertainment as problems with today's media, and he emphasized the importance of diversity and regulation in fixing these problems

"The media is a failing institution in this country," Dean said. "They are not maintaining their responsibility to maintain democracy."

One of the major problems Dean focused on during the talk is the media's increased focus on entertainment at the expense of investigative journalism.

"The Monica Lewinsky scandal exploded," Dean said, "and suddenly the way to get to the top [in media] was salacious gossip and sex scandals. There is no investigative journalism worthy of the name."

The television networks, especially Fox News, are most to blame for the increased focus in journalism on flash and entertainment, Dean said. Dean said these networks aim to entertain because "entertainment sells better than news." The infamous "scream speech," often blamed for Dean's loss to Sen. John Kerry '66 in the Democratic primaries, was partially a media fabrication because it was appealing for its entertainment value rather than its newsworthiness, Dean said.

"The media is trained to get the entertainment value and screw the facts," he said.

During the discussion, Dean said the media has almost completely lost its objectivity.

"You can't read a piece of newsprint very often in this country without being told what to think," he said.