The Selling of News
Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog writes about the disconnect between what the media covers and the world events that are really important.
To her credit Molly Ivins has written an exemplary article asking for a Media Accountability Day and providing attention to Project Censored. Their Top Ten Stories not covered by Corporate Media:
#1 Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government
#2 Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Deathtoll
#3 Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage
#4 Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In
#5 U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
#6 The Real Oil for Food Scam
#7 Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood
#8 Iraqi Farmers Threatened By Bremer’s Mandates
#9 Iran’s New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency
#10 Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy
In her article Molly Ivans writes:
I have long been persuaded that the news media collectively will be sent to hell not for our sins of commission, but our sins of omission. The real scandal in the media is not bias, it is laziness. Laziness and bad news judgment. Our failure is what we miss, what we fail to cover, what we let slip by, what we don’t give enough attention to — because, after all, we have to cover Jennifer and Brad, and Scott and Laci, and Whosit who disappeared in Aruba without whom the world can scarce carry on.
The media’s “laziness and bad news judgment” is only part of the problem. The fact is that if they want to make money and stay in business they have to write what $ell$.
The U.S. is a very mystical culture due to the prominent role of religion. That mysticism often produces a lot of guilt about basic human characteristics as well as a fantasy world designed to provide relief from that guilt and shame.
All types of mysticism and religion is just one type teach people to blur the line between existence and nonexistence, and as a result we lose the ability to distinguish between what is true and what is false. As a matter of fact, we stop caring because myticism and intellectual decadence teach us that the distinction is unimportant or doesn’t even exist.
This makes up a large part of the potential audience that the news media, bloggers and writers of all kinds must try to attract and keep.
The problem with writing about reality is that the audience is more interested in escaping reality than reading about it.
This is a free county and nobody in the media has the option of forcing people to stay tuned to their particular take on world events. There are many, and I agree with them, that there should be no PBS because it is run by the government and the taxpayers, while not forced to watch it, are forced to pay for it.
Government is another problem because mandatory, coercive governments are based on irrational premises, just like religion. As long as there are so many forces in our culture and others which put selective pressure on the genetically based, rational faculties of the human race, the population of individuals who prefer escapism to factual information will continue to grow.
As long as that population continues to grow, anyone in the media will have a financial incentive to tailor their coverage of world events to that audience.
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