Media Folly: Over- and Under-informed in the West

[Parthian King]

I just read what I considered perhaps the most absurd use of bandwidth ever perpetrated on a "news" website: A piece on the future of our galaxy. This gem explains what will (might?) happen to our solar system in five billion years.

Before anyone jumps on me for an anti-intellectual dearth of curiosity in relation to the created order, let me bring up a little factoid I came by this past week. Recently a leftist president (Correa) has been elected in Ecuador. He is enormously popular (about 80% approval rating) and is aggressively moving to rewrite the nation's constitution, reform the congress, and tighten his grip on everything from freedom of the press to foreign debt and banking relations. Among his agenda items is the expulsion of U.S. military forces (by 2009) from the Pacific penninsula which (most significantly) monitor drug and illegal human traffic out of both Colombia and Peru. Now, this information has received some coverage for those who would look for it. What has not been explained, and I only learned by corresponding with a missionary friend who still lives in Ecuador (I lived there some 7 years), is that Correa's vendetta against the U.S. is grounded in a childhood memory: His father was busted for drug smuggling by U.S. DEA personnel in Panama when he was a boy.

My question is this: Why must I, a relatively interested and curious reader, find out via the back door and by sheer happenstance (instead of proper news channels) something so significant as this about a foreign head of state whose motivations and actions could have such a powerful impact on the U.S. and its security? Why is the American public fed with speculation about the 5 billion year hence history of the universe or the current state of Britney's rehab, while what we need to hear is left out?

Much has been said about the "liberal media" and its agenda. I am beginning to think the Enemy doesn't want to turn us into pseudo-intellectual liberals so much as blatantly moronic lunatics.

[Olórin the Wise]

I agree completely, PK. The media is, in my opinion, one of the worst things that ever happened to my country. Take the Iraq war, for instance. Personally, I think that it was a necessary evil but let's not get into that right now. With the Iraq war, the media has been taking every death, every wound, every tiny scratch that's happened to the US forces in Iraq, and reporting it individually. I don't know what their motives are, but whatever they might be, the media is smoothly convincing this country that not only is the war in Iraq a terrible thing, but that war is ALWAYS, without exception, the WRONG choice - that there is no such thing as a just war. I heard a quote somewhere - it went something like this: "War is an evil thing, but not the evilest of things. A society so decadent that it would never go to war - that it had nothing left that it felt was worth fighting for - that would be worse than war." And it's exactly the opposite of that which the media is feeding to the masses right now. Sometimes it just makes me sick.

[PrinceOfTheWest]

As I look at the stuff the media is pushing these days, I'm reminded of nothing so much as a stage magician, who keeps his audience distracted with meaningless activity done with one hand while he does the real trick with the other. For instance, people are encouraged to get all worked up about the possibility of climate change (what climate doesn't change?), while masking the fact that in laboratories around the world, humans are being created for the explicit purpose of being torn apart and experimented upon.

"They have an engine called the Press, by which the people are deceived."

C.S. Lewis

[EveningStar]

The media has stepped out of its role as an independent observer. It has ceased to become the eyes and ears of an informed electorate and mutated into yet another source of propaganda.

We are treated like children to be shaped and molded by an older mentor who knows what's good for us. Thing is, the "ideal world" that journalists want to build for us is by and large free of such "burdens" as sexual mores and religious convictions. Boiled down to the Reader's Digest version: "If everyone just did whatever came naturally and didn't worry about some old man in a nightgown in the sky, we'd all be better off..." Uh huh....

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is important to consider what will happen to this world in five million years, for that's how long it will take to straighten out the mess they're creating.

[Copperfox]

As for the excesses of misguided pacifism:

One of the most terrible of all sensations is powerlessness--the inability to affect events that affect you. When you can't actually do something that makes a difference--or can't do it without risk and exertion that you're unwilling to take on--it's a temptation to deceive yourself that something easily within your power will make a difference. This is sometimes referred to as "neurotic magic." (Atheists would accuse Christians of practicing neurotic magic in every aspect of our faith.)

If we admit that the threat of terrorism and tyranny is the fault of terrorists and tyrants, then we have to face the grim reality of needing to fight those terrorists and tyrants (or at least, in the case of the better sort of pacifist, being prepared to be martyred by them). Therefore, a cowardly self-deceiver will choose to make himself believe that it's all the fault of the free nations...because, if it's all the fault of the free nations, those free nations will permit protest, and then the coward can convince himself that protest will solve everything. The self-deceiver then comes under the description offered by Mr. Lewis (from "The Abolition of Man") of those who think that "--peace matters more than honor, and is to be achieved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers."

[Parthian King]

Originally Posted by EveningStar

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is important to consider what will happen to this world in five million years, for that's how long it will take to straighten out the mess they're creating.

Ahem, that's five billion (with a "b"), Magister. And aside from the eschaton, not even that long would be enough pull us from this sin-induced morass.

[Olórin the Wise]

I was kinda hoping the End of Time would come before that...

[jesslaugh]

I guess it depends on what you see the role of the media as being. Ideally, it should be to spread the news about things that effect us. In reality, the media sees its own role as one of profit (like any business in a capitalist society). They push stories that sell subscriptions. And, honestly, our society doesn't care much about a liberal president in Ecuador. So, from a profit standpoint, the media is selling us garbage stories because we're all buying garbage stories. Supply and demand.

[inkspot]

Welcome to the discussion, Jess. I didn't see you post before. I agree with you about supply and demand. The reason our news has become entertainment is that we are idiots who demand to be entertained.

In Miracles, I believe, CS Lewis talks of a society which rejects sages and seers (philsophers, statesmen and clergy). At that point, there are two directions the society can go: everyone can become a sage and a seer in his own right, or everyone can become a moron. It's clear which direction the USA, anyway, si going: we won't listen to the smart people and the spiritual people, and we won't become smart and spiritual ourselves, so we are becoming morons.

[jesslaugh]

Hello inkspot! I agree with a lot of what you said, but I actually think that our society has become sages and seers. Most people in our society would say they are "spiritual" is some sense. Everyone thinks they are in touch with some spiritual part of nature/themselves/the world/the universe. We don't need religion because we are "spiritual" already.

I'm not sure how this effects the media. I guess it spurs lots of stories about yoga and exercise and eating right and being healthy. But, since spirituality is an individual thing, it's not something the media can push generally.