Ok, enough with the porn. Lately, I’ve been thinking about news.
During the 2004 elections, I got mad at news. As anyone who has worked in political communications or marketing for thirty seconds knows, it is all pretty much bullshit. I got so fed up that I spent a good part of the year doing my own research to figure out what was and was not true, not just about the election but everything else that was regular news fodder at the time. I learned a lot, it took up most of my time, and it was exhausting. After that, I decided I wanted to stay reasonably well informed, so I would check, say CNN’s website, and then peruse some other random news sites from around the world to see how the same stories were being covered, if at all. This was also exhausting, and only provided comparisons of flawed delivery systems for different audiences.
When the 2008 election cycle started – sometimes around the middle to end of 2007 – I started my own intentional news blackout. It lasted a year, and after that year was over, I really didn’t want to go back. In fact, news at all, whether from Fox, the New York Times, or the Baltimore Sun seemed all that much more repellent. (I have been known to flee stores and restaurants because they have the news on.) After a little while, I made a deal with myself: I would check CNN’s website maybe once a day to see if anything important blew up, and that would just have to do. And that is where I have been with news for the past year or so. I go out of my way to avoid it. Getting anywhere near TV news just makes my blood boil because it’s NOT NEWS. It’s garbage. News should not have a defined audience (except by geography), nor should anyone ever agree with the news. And how things become news, ah, like I said, if you’ve worked in political communications or marketing for thirty seconds, you know it’s all a game, and has nothing to do with truth or good journalism.
As a side note, in my fantasy world -the other kind of fantasy world- we would never have mandatory military service. Instead we would have mandatory political campaign service. All citizens would be required to work on a political campaign for six months or so. That would change our system but quick, people actually knowing what goes into getting our representatives elected and ballot measures passed.
Back from my digression: I have been intentionally almost completely tuned out for a while now, knowing that is a temporary solution to my truth-finding obsession / bullshit aversion. In a lot of ways this is really fun: staring blankly at people who bring up some major scandal creates quite a moment. They always want to know what is wrong with me that I don’t know what they’re talking about, but they always also look very, very uncomfortable; perhaps it reveals the absurdity of caring about some famous person’s addiction / transgression / pantslessness / whatever.
I have been feeling like the near total blackout is probably nearing the end of its usefulness, but I am not sure what is next. The earthquake in Haiti brought this front and center. On one hand, I get it: hundreds of thousands of people died, and there is great suffering. I usually tune into this strongly. On the other hand, because it is part of news culture, I’m completely tuned out. I don’t know if it is possible to separate events of importance that concern real human suffering from the bullshit delivery system. News media report facts when it serves them and truth, well, hardly ever.
Oh, the humanity.
