I received a great suggestion in response to my first post: Hit the brakes, back the fuck up, and explain what I mean when I talk about the dismal state of public discourse in the US.
What follows in this post and another soon is a list - in no particular order, in places overlapping, and without distinction between symptom and cause - of what I consider to be major problems. I'll elaborate on some of them in subsequent posts.
The "News Cycle"
Why the fuck does news need a cycle? When stuff happens, report it. If nothing that matters happens, there's nothing to report. That should be the end of the story. Instead we have news makers deliberately timing their actions and announcements in relationship to the cycle as though the cycle were some force of nature like the earth's orbit around the sun, and we have news media blowing stories out of proportion in order to fill gaps in the cycle as needed. The tail is wagging the dog so hard that the dog is nearly dead. And the average person's sense of the flow of major events in the world has become attuned to this artificial cycle.
Competition to Report News First
This is why we used to get TV news incorrectly announcing election winners based on exit polls. This is why, when anything big happens in the world, particularly involving loss of life or property, we have to listen to commentators speculating about how bad the loss might be, just to keep us glued to our TVs and keep their ratings high. And we eat it up. "As of two seconds ago, authorities are estimating that 23 people were killed.....wait, wait, wait, we're now hearing that that number may be as high as 24." We're junkies for the late breaking news, and the news media are our pushers.
Accuracy? If we don't care about it, why should the media? It's out the fucking window and splattered on the sidewalk like some poor middle manager who decides to end it all when he realizes that what he does doesn't matter anymore. Even if we can scrape accuracy's mangled carcass off the sidewalk and do a reasonably good job of reconstructing it, it makes little difference, because myriad decisions have already been made and actions taken based on the earlier deluge of Up To The Minute Bullshit Speculation.
Reduction of Complex Issues into Soundbites
The cokehead speed of the news cycle and our society's expectation that all information be delivered to us in cute, punchy little slogans (can we still call it information at that point?...) cause complex ideas and problems to be reduced to trite, vacuous soundbites. Nuance? DOA. Substance? On life support, but things aren't looking good.
Loss of Distinction between Reporting and Editorializing
Sure, reporters' views can color the information they gather for their stories, but there's still a line between reporting and editorializing. Or at least there used to be.....And the only thing fading faster than this distinction is the news consuming public giving a shit whether this distinction even exists. Breaking down the wall between fact and opinion serves all douchebags when it comes time to spew their inane, knee-jerk views on things they don't really understand, be it on network TV, or at your shitty Thursday happy hour.
Elevation of Opinion to the Importance of Fact
Back in 2010, during the shitstorm over President Obama's religion, Michael Kinsley wrote a great piece pointing out the role the pollsters themselves had played in stoking the controversy. They polled people on "the view that Obama is a Muslim" without mentioning that he is in fact Christian. They elevated the opinion of respondents over an established fact. A great way to manufacture a controversial poll result sure to get high ratings. Also a great way to fellate the egos of ignorant dipshits and make them think that their uninformed views on any number of other issues are worth a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Infotainment
As infotainment supplants real television news programs, the only standard for newsworthiness is whether a story will keep you glued to your TV and keep the ratings high, at the expense of all other concerns.
News Reports on......the News
Does anyone remember when Heidi Fleiss was in court back in the '90s? It was a slow month for real news (or at least for real news which would have kept the ratings high), so Madam Fleiss got disproportionate coverage. But then, to elevate it to true farce, TV news started reporting on the fact that TV news was paying too much attention to Heidi Fleiss. I was surprised that no network took it up a level to report on the hypocrisy of TV news reporting on TV news reporting on Heidi Fleiss. The irony would have been exquisite.
All I could think was "Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up guys. What makes you the 'watchdog'? You're all doing the same shit."
This kind of faux self-enforcement of journalistic standards continues unabated.
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