Our Idiot Culture (standard:Editorials, 1687 words)
Author: J P St. Jullian	Added: Jul 23 2002	Views/Reads: 3837/2347	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The American Media - What would we do without them?

Our Idiot Culture 

by J P St. Jullian 

Over twenty years ago, a little drama began with the Watergate break-in
and ultimately ended with the resignation of  this nation's 37th 
president, Richard Nixon.  The American press engaged in a frenzy of 
self-congratulations and defensiveness about its performance in that 
affair.  They need not have congratulated themselves, but they were 
right to be defensive.  Since that time the America that is served up 
today by the media is increasingly illusionary and delusional.  It is 
disfigured, unreal, and disconnected from the true context and fabric 
of our real lives.  When the media does cover American life as it 
actually exists they tend to break new ground in getting it wrong!  
What I mean is that the coverage is so distorted, either by celebrity 
or by the worship of celebrity.  They have a way of reducing real news 
to gossip, which is actually the lowest form of the news.  If not that, 
they sensationalize it, which is actually a turning away from society's 
true condition.  They are also pretty good at turning news into a 
political or social discourse, which in turn is turned into a sewer by 
practically everyone----the press, the media, the politicians, the 
citizens, etc. 

Have you ever been watching television and suddenly there is a “late
breaking” news item flashed across the screen?  When they start 
reporting, have you seen all the media vehicles, the vans with their 
transmitting and receiving equipment in the background?  How quickly 
they seem to get to the trouble spots!  And after they do their 
reporting, we are left knowing and understanding little more than we 
did before they started.  They are in such a great hurry so as not to 
miss a major story that thoroughness and quality reporting is discarded 
in favor of speed and quantity.  They seem under such great pressure to 
compete, the fear that somebody else will make the splash first, 
creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is 
presented and serious questions may not be raised; and even when such 
questions are raised, (as we saw when certain egregious stories about 
the Clinton family were aired), no one takes the time to do the work of 
properly sorting it all out so the questions can be answered properly. 

In truth, I think that reporting should be the best obtainable version
of the truth, regardless of who reports it.  Just look at some of our 
magazines and tabloids today!  They aren't designed to sell the truth, 
not the real truth.  Most national magazines are selling themselves by 
using sexy models on their front covers with hardly anything of real, 
honest to goodness substance between their pages.  This is just one 
indication that their commitment is not toward the best obtainable 
version of the truth, not toward building a journalism based on 
serious, thoughtful reporting.  No, these are not the priorities that 
jump out at you when you turn pages in your newspaper, or when you turn 
on the 11 o' clock local news or even network news shows.   It's all 
about money and ratings now. 

The world seems to have moved away from real journalism toward the
creation of a sleazoid info-tainment culture in which it is hard to 
distinguish the lines between Oprah, Phil Donnahue, Geraldo Revera, 
Sally Jesse Rafael and Diane Sawyer or any one of the other top 
reporters.  I could be wrong, but I think the lines are now obscured 
even between the New York Post and any one of our many tabloids; at 
least on some things.  In this new journalistic culture it would seem 
most of the time that trivial things are actually significant, that the 
sensational, offbeat and crazy are more important than real, honest to 
God news about the good and bad that affects peoples daily lives.  The 
viewers (poor unsuspecting knaves) seem to eat it up.  Journalism used 
to SERVE its readers and viewers, now it simply panders to them.  It 
condescends to readers and viewers, giving them what all the studies 
say they want.  Actually, they are giving the readers and viewers what 
the studies have calculated as being viably commercial; it will sell 
products, boost ratings and readership, increase current sales or all 
the above.  But in all fairness,  this kind of journalism could not 
succeed if readers and viewers did not rise to the occasion and warm to 
the trash they have been given.  Still, I think that instead of doing  
this, journalists should have as their goal, at least partially, to 
challenge the masses, not merely amuse them. 

I believe we as a nation of people are in the process of allowing, or


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