[lit-ideas] No News would be better News
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:08:54 -0500
PE: I have no sympathies for the Bush administration, but I can understand
their frustration. 'Electricity For An Extra Two Hours in Northwest
Iraq' or 'Central Iraq Polytechnic Holds Graduation' won't be a lead
story for any news organization outside of Iraq.
WHY don't the news people report more "good" stories? I can only think of 2
reasons;
1) Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky are right, there is a vast conspiracy to
keep people "scared" of certain things
OR
2) People love to watch others' bad luck [I think the German's have a word:
"schauckedenaude"] and don't realize that the net effect of that is that
we end up living in some really weird self-flagellating society or maybe we
DO already and that's why they feed us.
I think it's a combination of both. THERE IS a conspiracy, but the news
agencies are just dupes. Afterall, they just report, nobody really digs for
the truth anymore. You could get almost ANYTHING printed in a newspaper
these days just by seeding the story. But I also think that people DO want
bad news. Picture your grandmother watching the news saying to her husband
"Oooh, that's terrible, turn it up will you?" I remember once my mother
bought a particularly objectionable book and threw it away... "the moment I
finished it."
So... while it is true that most of us enjoy a little suffering of others,
I think the media has gone too far. They are completely sensationalizing
anything they can -- and in almost all cases, for the negative spin.
In the past, the exaggerations were in the headline -- "Accident in Nuclear
Power Plant" and you find out that someone fell off a ladder. Nowadays,
they seem to have epidemics of news. So that if a serious mudslide happens
somewhere in the world, for a period of two or three weeks (more or less
depending on how close the next tragedy falls) all of a sudden we are
besieged by stories about rock falls, avalanches, the history of falling
debris etc. so that they make stories out of non-stories.
It's unfortunate that by preying on the fact that we are very
associatively-thinking creatures so whatever we recognize, we might pay
attention to, they (the media, perhaps even unintentionally) whip every
singular real 'bad' thing into epidemics. Three ruinous hurricanes (2 of
which did damage because of governmental ineptness, not because of the
hurricane's actual direct damages) and "IT"S THE WORST HURRICANE SEASON
EVER!!!" (notice the triple exclamation point)
But they do the same things on both sides... sometimes you'll get spates of
'feel good' stories. An autistic child sinks 6 3-pointers in a basketball
game and all of a sudden George Bush is calling him "J Mac" [why is George
W. Bush even visiting this guy?] and everyone has a reason to talk about
anything to do with autism, Asperger's, ADD/HDD etc. Now... for sure, a lot
of people who might be a little introverted will be self-diagnosing
themselves with 'autism' and thinking of themselves as 'special' instead of
distracted by the fact that information overload of today could tend to
drive people to recoil into their own little world.
Whether or not we like it, more and more I think, our reality is being
shaped by the news reporting. People on the streets and at the water cooler
DO all parrot the same things they heard or saw (hardly ever read) on/in
the news. And it's so very consistent within a huge area. In ALL of N.A. on
every given morning, you can read maybe a dozen "stories" if you scour 20
or 30 news mediums. Of course you can consult the more 'reputable' ones and
if you dig deep enough, you can find those stories about a graduation going
forth in Iraq, but you won't find it anywhere that is in plain site.
That's really too bad. I'd like to learn about ANYTHING positive that is
going on in other places, but it's just too much work, and in some cases,
virtually impossible.
lazily yours,
p
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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