Your Mind as a Medium
Media, huh? I've had a few discussions with friends regarding the media over the past few weeks and it's really getting to me. I can barely remember my life before 24 hour news sources. I'm pretty sure that there was a time in my life when we learned about the world from the morning paper, or the morning and afternoon TV or radio newscasts. Now, cable television and the internet innundate us with news of the world's events. Details of countless events, banal and cataclysmic, are constantly relayed to us and we soak it all up. We, as fellow passengers on this planet, are more aware of each other than we ever have been before.
The value of all this information is questionable. As with any knowledge gained, its worth is made evident in its application. We certainly know a great deal about one another, but what are we learning from one another or from ourselves?
I'm sure there's a name for the phenomenon I'm about to describe, but I don't know what it is; maybe I'll coin a new term. The events of September 11, 2001 changed the world as we had known it. In the space of a few iconoclastic hours, several thousand people were killed, 4 airplanes were destroyed, 2 buildings razed, and the center of the United States' military was breached. Those few hours have been relived countless times by countless people all over the world. The events of that morning, now over two and a half years later, are still referred to on a daily basis in the general discourse regarding world affairs. Those few hours have been stretched into an eternity in our collective conscious. The facts of the event are lost as every anchorperson, critic, pundit, cleric, blogger, crackpot, politician, mechanic, child, etc tries to make meaning of it. The phenomenon is this: an event, selected for its importance or popularity, is vetted by the media until the significance of the facts surrounding it is blurred by the over interpretation of those facts.
The media, like clergy, are becoming the source of not just information, but meaning. Because the simple relaying of events doesn't provide enough programmable material for 24 hour broadcasting or internet publishing, the media has to interpret and analyze as well. People look to "the news" to validate their fears or concerns. If someone wants to corroborate their beliefs, they can pick and choose from thousands of valid news sources to do so. This is a bad thing.
Well, it's not necessarily bad, but I think has potential to become very dangerous. While one might have previously been forced to mull over the news of the day's events on her own, today's media consumer is spoon fed selected details of events along with the interpretation of these events that will best suit/least offend her. Pick your poison: CNN, FoxNews, BBC, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. I'm a big fan of internet news sources, news.google.com in particular. I love news.Google because it allows me to scan headlines from thousands of different news sources at once, allowing me to elect to learn of the world's events through differing eyes. For instance, last week, I was intrigued by Aljazeera's headline, Bloggers doubt Berg execution video. I read the article and was amazed that Al Jazeera would present the musings of bloggers as fodder for news. Part of me is inspired by the idea of culling tidbits of news analysis from so many lone voices on the web, but I realized upon reading this article, that many people aren't always looking for differing viewpoints, but are merely looking for an official news source that eases their fears. In a related article, Al Jazeera quotes an Egyptian pharmacy student who says that the decapitation of Berg was "bad because it makes Arabs look like barbarians but that's what the Americans think anyway."
Arabs do not want to believe that their people are capable of such abominations, so Al Jazeera will do what it can to make sure its readers are consoled rather than insulted by the news. Americans do not want to believe that their country is responsible for abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but there are so many independent news sources scrutinizing American activities that it's almost impossible to ignore. Nonetheless, despite my failed efforts to find an example, I know that if one is trying hard enough, anyone interested would be able to uncover an editorial attempting to justify the abuses in Abu Ghraib. In short, you can find someone to agree with you, no matter how far fetched your views. If you're a politician with an agenda, this can be lethal (although intelligence and news aren't exactly the same, they're both liable to the same complications when they become too varied).
Now, in a sense, this is a very good thing. Allowing so many voices to be heard might help prevent the media from commanding too much authority. I'm just worried for the individuals who no longer have the chance to use their own minds to analyze the events of the day.