Column by Matthew Fox
I was struggling while coming up with ideas for this article, so, to break the writer’s block, I decided to flip the channels on TV. When I reached the block of cable news channels, I saw something extraordinary: Every one of them was covering a weather balloon gone astray with a child in it.
Here’s the kicker: The boy was hiding in his attic and was nowhere close to the balloon.
I’ve told that story to ask one simple question: Why? Why do we as a nation watch a balloon fly around for hours because one child might be in it, then get upset when we find it to be a hoax?
I say touche to that family for getting an entire country to believe the family’s son was on that balloon. If we have nothing better to do with our time, or if the news has nothing better to report, then we deserve to be duped a couple of times. If the most important, news-worthy story happening in the world was this, then I think we as Americans need to re-think our priorities.
It seems we are more concerned with the latest celebrity arrested for drunken driving, or what happens to “reality†TV stars, than we are about things going on that truly have an impact on the world that we live in.
There are genocides going on in Sudan and The Congo, a repressive regime in Myanmar is jailing people for even speaking about democracy and piracy in the oceans is plaguing worldwide trade. But we don’t hear about any of this until something involving America happens. We didn’t hear about Myanmar in the news until an American swam to it, nor did we hear about piracy until an American vessel was taken. We are selfish, and unless it’s happening to us, we do not want to hear about it. However, what we want to hear about and what we need to hear about are two different things, and that is where the 24-hour cablenews channels come in.
They have a fantastic and unprecedented opportunity to give us important information around the clock. But, sadly, they fall very short of this goal. They report on what will make them money rather than on what the American people need. It’s not all about the money; it’s about doing what is best for our society. Scaring people with threats of a deadly swine flu epidemic or being blatantly biased toward one political party is not the way to do it. They have a duty to the American people to provide the high quality information necessary for a democracy to function. By siding with one party over another, they fall short of this.
They provide one side of an issue and present it as absolute fact rather than their own opinions. For us to have an informed citizenry that is politically active, the media needs to present both sides to a story and present the facts.
Why does it matter if Sarah Palin’s daughter was pregnant, or that Barack Obama’s father was Kenyan? It doesn’t. The only thing that matters are the political issues which, quite frankly, have taken a back seat to all of this in recent years.
As Americans we need to change our attitudes and views of the world. We need to get rid of this selfish attitude we have and actually care about the world we live in. Most of the news channels and organizations such as Fox News, MSNBC and CNN care more about money than about what is best for the people. The attitudes can’t be changed until we change what the mass media broadcasts and engrains in us. What is more important: when a celebrity gets arrested for DUI or when thousands of children die in one day due to a genocide?
The mass media virtually sets the mindset of our society. With that being said, I end with a quote by William Bernbach, a legend in American advertising who said, “All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society, we can brutalize it, or we can lift it onto a higher level.â€
Matthew Fox is a political science, and psychology sophomore. E-mail opinions@kykernel.com.
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