Media hype

Should I allow myself to become upset as much as I do over media hype?

After all, we know the media in much of the world is a business first. This means bad news leads and good news is seldom reported. And in most of the free world the media often exploits its potential for propaganda and swaying public opinion because politicians tend to equate media interest with public opinion - sometimes falsely.

And the bad and alarmist news topics are so many. Take health (obesity, trans fats, AIDS, SARS, bird flu, smoking, cell phones, health care costs, etc.), transportation (SUV’s, terrorism, bridge safety, etc.), environment (global warming, energy independence, nuclear power, endangered species, etc.), politics and elections (too many national and international topics to list, etc.), culture (racism, abortion, Christmas, class warfare, etc.), economics (state of the economy, housing starts, unemployment statistics, CEO salaries, etc.), education (teachers unions, vouchers, etc.), and well I think I can go on. The media hype target list is a big list that should generate a lot of business for words and radio and tv. There is an underlying assumption of the poor state of the masses ability and time in handling all this “news” as it is presented in all its forms. At least this is what many worry about…the ignorant masses using this hype and then voting.

The alternatives are less inviting to those of us from the Western mode of thought. A government controlled media is propaganda. The effect on the masses is worse than the western model to most of us. While propaganda news promotes one group or idea over others, similarly its restraint of competing ideas and suppression of bad news restrains the society surviving and even improving. This is one seed from which more benign revolutions come, as in the Enlightenment.

Media people are people, after all. They have egos, political opinions, career jobs that generate a paycheck, and successful business models to follow. Those media people in dictatorships and other restricted societies may add in just trying to survive, literally. In both cases, I borrow a Winston Churchill quote and modify it for my purposes: “Never have so many been influenced by so few”.

In this there is concern for us westerners. The potential for media to abuse words and radio and tv has been exploited by too many in media, often to the point called “journalistic malpractice”. This abuse seems especially amplified in media that has government funding in part; PBS in the USA and the BBC in Great Britain. While this practice is not new, the ever expanding means of communicating the “news” is newer, and in this there is focus on what is really happening.

The concern for whether the “ignorant masses” are consuming this media hype and then voting on it, is overblown, I believe. To many unsoiled media literates, I am probably part of the “unwashed” masses (having been in the Marines). I wish them luck, especially those that confuse education with intelligence.

Unfortunately, there is a problem in our present day national program of public and private education. And the problem is in how the “washed” are educated.

Or as Thomas Sowell wonders, is it somehow that many journalists, or those that they appeal to, believe that they are so iron-clad right that no one could even mistakenly disagree with them without being bought and paid for by their bad guys?

Is our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. (Sowell mostly).

Do the implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses matter? Are these implications in fact the Achilles heel of this generation of our society and of Western civilization? (Sowell mostly).

While media hype is constant, I also believe in history that the pendulum does swing back and forth; and right now the pendulum is swinging away from those western media types who skew the “news” for business or political reasons. Only time will tell if I am correct, or even if the pendulum is swinging. I am hopeful for the future, and have decided to be less upset about media hype, or at least more neutral as I digest what we citizens are presented these days. And my “unwashed” news filters will remain ever vigilant.