The News, Revisited

For some reason my writing ability seems to be at a negative five right now. As a result, I’ve been attempting to write a response to comments left by my friend “GO” last week, concerning the nature of News coverage in this country (This Week On The News). I wrote a response like three days ago, but the language was sub-par and I couldn’t put the right words together. So I’ve enlisted some help through Instant Messenger conversations and some of the comments GO left, in order to further the train of thought expressed in that post. I’ll try to be brief.

To reiterate the thesis: The News sucks! News stations amplify stupid stories (e.g. Janet Jackson’s breast), diminish important issues (e.g. recent alleged government involvement in 26 deaths of Iraqi prisoners), and often feed the nation with one course meals of insignificant occurrences (e.g. Terri Schiavo).

One thing that I had thought about, but GO aptly noted in his comments, is that seemingly inherent in human nature is voyeuristic tendencies. We all claim not to care what the “Jones’s” are doing, and we seemingly have an intrinsic disdain for Hollywood and all its glitz, but secretly we do care what Britney Spears is up to this week, and we really are curious to find out if Michael Jackson is guilty. If not, how else would Reality TV survive?

As my West Coast IM friend Harinder put it, “Because we like those things (Maelstrom)! We just need a pretext to watch them without guilt…porn is stigmatized, but watching Janet’s breasts over and over and over on TV ‘just to denounce’ them, now that’s fine…curiously bizarre part of society.”

Unfortunately, this voyeuristicness (if I can coin a word) and guilt-guarding (to coin another) creeps into the most important things like disbursement of information through the media.

How do we rectify this problem? I don’t know if it is rectifiable at this point because there is seemingly no viable alternative. What we need is a news-station that leans neither to the political right or left, but gives us the news as it is. A news-station that has the balls to actually report dissenting opinions with respect to the Political Party that is in power. Most importantly, we need a station that doesn’t waste time on trivialized, sensationalistic “whoop-tee-do,” which has little to do with the vicissitudes of the average American’s lives.

Sounds like a tall order, but in a nation that’s supposed to be a Democracy, it shouldn’t be impossible.

Alright, my brain is fried, I can’t seem to think or write clearly, so that is all! If you want real wisdom on this topic, peep GO's comments at the end of my April 11th post, This Week On The News. Any further comments???

-Maelstrom