Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Let’s start with a brief, but boring philosophical lecture on news criticism and the news consumption model (you can skip, really):

First, let’s establish that news is the recording of events that happened in reality. News is not made up. News may or may not be true. A sound argument is one in which the conclusion logically follows from the premise. In the case of journalism, the premise is the events that the reporter records. The premise is a discrete point on the continuum of current history. This being so, each point is completely arbitrary and has varying motivations as to why this point was chosen as opposed to that point. We could tell the story of how Johnny overcame his disabling limitations to graduate college and become a great doctor who volunteered his time to help the homeless of his community, which, out of context, would be inspiring, but news does not always serve that function.

“Objective” journalism is a human impossibility if you were to define journalism as including every stage: event, assignment, record, article, distribution. In the discipline, to save time and efficiently distribute the news, the editor must cut articles from publication. This means that if Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan today, Johnny would run to the backburner until it was a slow news day. Business. Business dictates the news. Not truth. Not responsibility. Sex sells and if it bleeds, it leads. So the first bias of news is obvious: assignment.

The second bias of news is harder to pin down because you can’t always know their implications. When a statement or description goes on the record, it doesn’t always include every fact. Every fact can be important, however (we will see this in the case study below). Proportionality can often skew important dissenting opinions that may very well be the only correct one. Big is the bias. The loudest voice in the room is often the most present in the news even though the smaller voice may be the only sensible one.

The third bias is the article. The article you read may not be the entire article written. Even if somehow the filtering biases managed to capture the story without privileging a particular spin of the story, the editors have the power to exclude even more. If the most important part of the article is truth, the inverted pyramid does not necessarily put the least true part at the bottom. The article may even be misleading. With language that may have bias toward a part of the event. A SCREAM in a press conference, by principles of contrast is more present than a whisper. Objective journalism has only captured the scream. History is written by the conqueror.

Lastly, the bias that is most important in this age of mass media is distribution. Different newspaper companies had different abilities to cover various events. Not all newspapers were created equal. A newspaper in Podunk, PA was often shot down by sheer inability to compete with the New York Times, even though, from a management and editorial perspective, it is easier to manage Podunk Weekly and assure the news is accurate, fair, and transparent. In Podunk, PA, everyone is apparently “up in everyone else’s business” and it’s harder to get away with bad journalism. By the ability to drive down newspaper costs, there is a bias in the types of news outlets that can survive. Bigger is not necessarily better, but it’s all we have.

Enter the age of mass media. News organizations have completely consolidated. Social structures are larger and more efficient. New forms of distribution start to make newspapers antiquated. As Marshall McLuhan so aptly stated, “‘the people have spoken.” We want all the latest on what is happening to our troops overseas… bam! Radio emerges. We want to know what really is going on in Korea… bam! TV enters the scene. We want to read the news that matters to us because there is just a wealth of information in this media ecosystem… bam! Computers networked together. Each with a different distribution bias. Radio gives a regional bias to it’s national syndication, TV gives a set of choices and shows us exactly what the reporter sees. No mystery, right? And internet allows us to hear what we want to hear about what matters to us and to Hell with democracy!

But the previous ages of news set us up for the big bias. In fact, one might say that news creates the news. There are so many ways to get free publicity… CNN, Fox, MSNBC, The New York Times, Twitter, the Drudge Report (You are the pimp, Bill!). And all you have to do is contribute to the doing of something more and more outrageous. Boredom has come to be an unbearable thing. But, when we’ve seen it all before, we only want something more outrageous. If you haven’t seen a woman’s tits by the age of seven, there is something wrong with you and you need to see the coochie. C’mon, it’s not enough to walk into a subway with a monkey suit in New York. Think bigger. We are going to dress drag like the Queen of the Amazon and bring in a cheetah with a mu-mu.

And it works. Something more outrageous comes. Some greater act of violence enters the mainstream media, some bigger tower, some more dangerous politician, something more global and hardly comprehensible. Hunter S. Thompson was very keen in arguing that objective journalism became the downfall of American Democracy. The cynicism of journalism created the monster of the state, the spectre of capitalism, and the demonization of anarchy. How can you reduce the size of the communist party of America? A little trick that the Romans used: crucifixion. Martyrdom was an appropriation of the symbol of the cross. In reality, the cross was the ultimate form of capital punishment for treason. You hang someone on a cross to not only punish the offender, but to warn any future offender “this could be you.” This motivated crosses to be put on roads, near villages and anywhere where people would see. It was one of the finest examples of state-imposed terrorism. The media is corporate-imposed terrorism. Chaos begets chaos. Each piece of seemingly unstoppable threat makes an increasingly forceful response.

Yet, the real problems are not what you vicariously see. The real problems are around you: homelessness, suicide, homophobic violence, kids that feel the pressure to be bigger and contribute to this dispicable system of mass competition. The problem is we are afraid of liberation. Like Plato’s cave, our cynicism makes us favor the darkness. What would the point of Utopia be? How could people live without constant conflict and opposition? Ask a peaceful community. Ask the Amish. To not have to deal with constant violence like when one of their schools were raided by gunfire. And rather than ask the shooter to “be brought to justice” as some would call it, they ask to show him mercy. Anyone can worry about evil, but it takes courage to fill the world with light. It takes cleverness to defeat cynicism and make the light seem genuine and it takes risk to step out of the ego race and the constant cycle of bigger.

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? You don’t smash capitalism. You drop a home on it.