The Problem with the News
As a journalist for many years (full-time for more than two decades), I’ve acquired a compulsive addiction to TV and radio news bulletins. If I’m driving a car and the time approaches the “top of the hour,” I’m quite unable to resist tuning the radio to the local full-time news network. If I’m watching TV (a fairly rare event), no matter what the program is that I might have intended to view, within a few minutes I find myself switching to CNN, or FOX, or MSNBC.
It was thus with utter dismay that I watched, on one of the news channels (for propriety’s sake I won’t say which), on a single middle-of-the-evening news bulletin quite recently, the following items: (1) a woman who thought she was a vampire had tied a man up, slashed him with a knife, and drunk his blood (presumably, he thought she had other things in mind when he submitted to being tied up); (2) a mother in a private home was barely prevented from drowning all of her children; (3) an 84-year-old woman was jailed for three years for having sex with an 11-year-old in her foster care.
The cliché response to these horrors is “What is the world coming to?” But a more thoughtful question is twofold: Is our totally free society becoming even more unglued today than it was in the past? Who is creating the demand for news of this particularly lurid variety—the TV consumer or the producer who thinks this will increase a news show’s ratings?
In answer to the first question, the jury is probably still out. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and Europe witnessed grisly crimes that have scarcely been equaled in our own day: Lizzy Borden was the notorious Massachusetts spinster accused (but later acquitted) of having murdered her parents with an axe in 1892. Four years earlier, Jack the Ripper had terrified the East End of London with fastidiously creative murders-by-disembowelment of London prostitutes. In the twentieth century, the US, the UK, and the rest of Europe had enough grisly murders to fill several months of continuous news bulletins. In 1966, Richard Speck alone murdered eight Filipina nurses in Chicago, stabbing or strangling them one by one. It’s probable that human wickedness has not, collectively, gotten any worse in recent decades.
Two things, however, have significantly changed our perception of these events. One is the news cycle, the momentum of non-stop around-the-clock news reporting that seems compelled to punctuate “serious news”—diplomacy, wars, politics—with sidebars that titillate people’s apparent need for gossipy items. The other is the shrinking capacity of most people’s attention spans. Rapid-image advertisements, video games, and music videos have all contributed to a reduction of most people’s capacity to absorb new information in measured, sustained doses. We seem to need attention-grabbing incidents and videos to keep ourselves awake.
Well, our attention has been grabbed. Unfortunately, we are reeling from it. A picture of humanity that is relentlessly colored by its most gruesome crimes is as unrealistic as one that ignores such crimes altogether. TV producers, of course, are not paid for their ability to balances images of evil with those of good deeds. But if enough viewers complained that constant depiction of mayhem in society was making them—well, ill—perhaps the corporate bean-counters who define what is profitable to air, and what is not, would give the producers new instructions.
I’m hopeful of this happening; on the other hand, I’m not holding my breath until it does.
Dr. Aikman is a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and writer in residence at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. His website is www.davidaikman.com.
5 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Society, Science and Technology, David Aikman, Wed 21 Feb 2007
Surely Mr. Aikman did not realize how prophetic his remarks would be—what with this week in the Anna Nicole Smith fiasco. The judge, in particular (not to mention the others involved in the proceedings), behaved in a way that should embarrass every person involved in our legal system. What, I wonder, do people in nations around the world who watch Fox News, etc., think about what captures an audience in the USA? I can’t recall when I have seen such a public and blatant display of narcissism. But Aikman is right about one thing—this stuff sells and money rules.
One evening in the 1970’s I came home from work in a particularly good mood; everything had gone right that day. My wife had dinner prepared. The TV was on the nightly news. Before we sat down to dinner I was in a terrible mood. I haven’t watched the news on television since. A combination of newspapers and the internet more than meets my needs.
With billions of people interacting with one another, nature, and the powers that be, unusually good and bad things will happen each day. The media chooses what to report with an all too obvious bias.
David makes a point of fundamental importance. I venture to submit that it is the audio-visual media that is responding to its viewers’ craving for soundbites that are laden with notions of barbarianism, depravity, etc. If this insinuation is true, what does it tell us of the society in which we live? and the implications thereof? Reporting facts, such as the 84-year old grandmother’s unconscionable act which David refers to, is fine if it were followed up with a helpful analysis of the psychological or other underpinnings for such behavioural perversions. In the event, we see very little of thoughtful analysis or thought-provoking debate on the part of the media. One can only conclude that, while horrific episodes of sheer brutality and depravity also occurred in the earlier centuries, the utter shamelessness in which these are now presented and received can unfortunately only lead to increasingly aberrant behaviour patterns in our societies. So, as David rightfully suggests, the corporate beancounters are the ones to pressure the media with new instructions, and we can help by threatening the former with total boycott of their products and/or services.
Albuquerque, NM
on 2007 02 23
The easiest way to control others is through fear. For years the news media does everything they can to increase the amount of fear the average person feels. Then they have programs on talking to people about what they should do in a world that has them “Scared Stiff” (Coming up this week on ABC). People are then moved in a direction they desire them to go. My answer is perfect love casts out fear. I can’t make a difference in the 84 year old woman’s life or the lives of the others mentioned, but I can make a difference for those in my own community. I can work on a Habitat home, feed the needy, talk to the latch-key child to let him know some one is here if he is frightened, visit the sick, help the elderly, etc. I don’t have to be overwhelmed by the news in far off places, I can love those that the Lord has placed in my community. I watch the news, but am not consumed by it. I am consumed with what I am called to do this day, in this place I call home.