Mainstream Media

Who controls the news? The liberals? The 'media elite?' Well, in truth it's about 10-20 guys.

The major news outlets in America deliver the news to most citizens. While the print media has been steadily declining over the last decade, the rise of the Internet traffic and TV viewership has placed more power into the hands of the few that control what is deemed 'newsworthy.'

Before criticizing these media giants, it's important to recognize the huge amount of news that these organizations must sift through. All day, every day something in the world is happening that might be worthy to share with others. There are fires in California, drought in Africa, slaughter in small villages in the Congo, corruption in business and car crashes on most national highways. On the other hand, there is splendid work being done in cancer and AIDS research, progressive politicians making unpopular decisions to support the poor, and sound policies being created in Washington. In short, there is too much to report.

So, what ensues is a sort of media triage: what is the most critical and breaking story, what is second priority, which story affects the most Americas, etc. etc. Stories are dissected into sound bites and mashed together into countdowns and leads. Major events may garner a few minutes; less important events get 30 seconds. The most dire of circumstances usually takes the top of the hour--the toast of the TV. Death, destruction and depravity are written in bold and scroll across the screen every 2 and 1/2 minutes.

This begs the question: what is left out? What lands on the cutting room floor; which weak light is snuffed out under the heels of videographers?

Well, generally, the warm fuzzy stuff. It's rare to see stories of grandmothers organizing events for seniors that rally support in Congress for medicare reform, or stories about a local chapter of women effectively lobbying a city council to remove a sexist teacher, or a story about a class of thru-hikers who successfully walked from Georgia to Maine and thereby achieved their dreams. No, good news is not flashy.

In part, this is the citizenry's fault--we are a nation with a heightened sense of morbid curiosity. Perhaps we are so isolated that our rubber-necking is only human nature. We work hard and we expect to be pampered a bit when we get home. We sit on our leather couches, our La-Z-Boys, our extra-plush carpeting, and we watch in shock as terrorists behead and threaten, and we hug each other and bolt-lock our five doors and fall into our king-sized rooms and hide under our duvets.

Most of us spend our days bombarded by advertisements and plastic glitz. While the third-world seems millions of light years from us we are hit between the eyes with it at 5PM, 6PM, 7PM, etc. The effect is cyclical: we work, watch the Internet, get scared, go buy comforts, go home, watch more horror, get afraid, buy more comforts, go work harder, etc, etc...Bad news breeds more bad news and so on and so forth.

We need comforts, that's understandable. But we also need to be uplifted. We need stories of overcoming hardship, achieving dreams, succeeding in the face of defeat.

The media fire hose of information leaves us surprisingly parched--it's the good news for which we all yearn.