I was recently using the analogy of society as a body and I asserted that news organizations are the body's eyes. Information is channelled to the brain through the eyes, and information is channelled from the media out to society at large.
Right wing bloviators are often fond of saying that the media has a liberal bias. They like to call it "The Mainstream Media". I've heard many statements about how the media has a agenda and they are trying to steer the country in the wrong direction. These are usually people that watch Fox News and O'Reilly and listen to Rush Limbaugh, so I shouldn't take it too seriously. I hear them saying that the media concentrates only on the negative things in Iraq and aren't showing all the good that's being done there. These are the same people that start saying "Remember 9/11, those terrorists are going to attack again any time now" when an election is in the works and their Republican champions need to be reelected.
I get tired of the simple and effective way that fearmongers and sensationalists can drag whole segments of society over to their way of thinking. In a recent This WNYC Radiolab broadcast, they reviewed the old War of the Worlds radio show. Many people were fooled by a newscast style dramatization of an Alien Invasion in 1938. What many people don't know is that it happened again in Quito Ecuador and Buffalo New York. The point they were trying to make was that people are susceptible to deception. They pointed out that the formula of the broadcast was the voice of a newscaster calmly describing some terror or catastrophe, similar to Edward R. Murrow's description of the Blitz in London during WWII. People like to hear from news authorities that things are dire, but they can explain it calmly. They also mentioned FDR's fireside chats as similar formula: things are bad, but we understand what's going on and we're under control.
Hype and hysteria are irresistible to the average person. The Radiolab broadcast showed how news organizations like to lead with some kind of horrible hype and hook you in so you'll watch the whole broadcast. "What are you feeding your children that can KILL them? Coming up soon after a word from our sponsor."
It wouldn't be so disturbing if people weren't so gullible. I get several emails a week that are forwards of some crisis or another that always proves to be a complete fabrication. My boss dropped an email on my desk with a caption "Interesting" scribbled on it about how much more taxes we were paying under Clinton. I Googled it and found it's source to the be blog "Thoughts of a Conservative Christian". In the piece, the author sites a taxpayer.org or some such organization that gave him the numbers. Two seconds later, I'm on that site and interestingly, its cover page is dedicated to debunking the piece that led me to them. Does nobody check any facts any more? People especially like to hear about things that reinforce what they already believe, and they react with horror and anger at anything they don't already believe. Look at Creationists reaction to Evolution or many people's reaction to Climate Change science.
And they usually say it about the news organizations that are out there actually gathering information, checking facts, and presenting valid news. "Why do you have to focus on all the bad things?" they might ask. Because there are bad things happening, and the first step to prevent or fix the bad things that happen is to look the problem over without flinching. To say that news is biased and must be controlled, censored or repudiated is a real dangerous step. This is like saying you want to cut out your own eyes or put on blinders and try to navigate in the world. The solution isn't to shoot the messenger, but to track down the real problems and try to solve them.
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