On January 27th, I was watching the CNN analysts tear apart the President’s State of the Union speech, looking at everything, tiny bit by tiny bit…. from the total number of words, to how many words were spoken before he presented his half-hearted, reprioritized healthcare message. Panels of “average American” Democrats, Republicans and Independents were interviewed. Meters measured their responses during the speech and were reviewed afterwards. Experts, biased and unbiased, from every segment were brought forth. Facts were checked from almost every perspective. And hours and hours of analysis and mindless interviews were imported. Fox News did the same with a critical eye, presenting hours and hours of opinions. Bottom line: the only real news was the speech, and the President dumbed it down enough so I could actually understanding without the gaggle of pompous experts and laymen produced to explain the obvious to me.
What a colossal waste. We don’t get news on television anymore. We get pictures, footage and piles of inane comments, left right or center, to explain what was obvious in the first place. Americans who watch television news seem to search out networks that reaffirm their perception of the world and will not watch a telecast without that necessary bias. Since everything is presented from the same perspective, there really isn’t any news at all… just preselected propaganda, right or left, with truth long lost between the cracks. I remember when Walter Cronkite was actually a source of authoritative news. That was a long time ago. Now, I can go online and look at the same story from the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting or even those loving folks at the English-language Al Jazeera site.
It’s about revenues and viewership… truth is a sideshow that interferes with the business side of television news. Fox News, a bastion of conservatism, is said to generate $700 million of profits for parent News Corp. a year, more than the NBC, CBS and ABS, CNN and MSNB news combined. So they must be right! But is this really good for America? Is Fox News, as fake-news-comedian, clearly left of center, Jon Stewart (The Daily Show – on Comedy Central) described that network in an interview on Bill O’Reilly’s own Fox News program (split into two segments airing on February 3rd and 4th), a “cyclonic perpetual emotion machine” that has “taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic about the next coming of Chairman Mao”? Is it any worse than Keith Olberman’s rants on MSNBC – except for the falling ratings?
With multiple American television channels dedicated to a mind-numbing over-saturation of 24/7 of “news” flow, the need to create identifying characteristics to facilitate ads sales trumps accuracy. Biased news, left and right, catered to those seeking filters to make sure nothing but their preordained points of view would ever reach their eyes and ears. Basically, with too much news, a lot of people were finding out how to eliminate most of it. With “all news, all the time,” the news channels needed cheap talking heads to fill the time vacuum; editorials, biased analysis and opinions followed almost every political and economic story. Hard news and editorial slant blurred into a unified morass of “information.” It has become very difficult for people to tell the difference. How much of this filtration helped support the mythology that allowed our financial markets to spin out of control?
One is reminded of the little boy or girl covering their ears and making a noise so that they will not hear their parent’s admonitions. Fractured connectivity has allowed people to select out of purveyors of facts they do not want to see or hear and travel into media worlds where they can be sure that everything they see and hear will be consistent with their view, often inaccurate, of the universe and the way things should be. The impact of this trend, particularly where a voting electorate must select leaders to deal with a very real and fact-filled world, is disturbing. The ability to “spin” media coverage, the truckloads of cash needed to permeate the media world with information that is processed through the system, the number of “special interests” and lobbyists with the financial wherewithal to spread supporting mythology to the relevant constituency, often determine the political winners and losers… not truth. Funny that our Congress… our electorate itself… seem to look like folks who only can embrace one point of view… Funny without the “ha ha.”
I’m Peter Dekom, and I feel really strange about all this.
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