One of the disturbing aspects of the crisis in Ukraine is the dearth of information being provided by cable news outlets. If you’ve ever doubted the power and influence of the media infotainment complex, Ukraine should serve as confirmation. CNN tries, but, being CNN, the “news” is packaged more for entertainment than information. MSNBC is caught up in their personality-driven programming, most of which involves pundits and other “experts” pontificating at some length about the significance of things which allow them to revel in their own mellifluous tones. Fox News Channel? I’m probably not the one best suited to speak to the relevance and/or accuracy of FNC’s coverage. They’re less a news outlet dedicated to objective journalism than the propaganda arm of Koch Industries and the GOP.
It’s not entirely the mainstream media’s fault, I suppose. Not when the average American attention span and ability to focus on real issues is comparable to that of your average 16-year-old girl. The marketplace determines not only what’s disseminated, but how that information is packaged. When you complain that news outlets are far more about infotainment than cogent, insightful analysis, you’re disturbingly close to the truth. We live in an era when 22% of Americans know the names of the (fictional) Simpson’s family, but only .1%- one in a thousand- can name all five 1st Amendment freedoms.
(If you’re curious, the freedoms are speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.)
Not that we should be expecting Americans to be constitutional scholars, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that we’d have at least a minimal curiosity about what’s happening in the world beyond our borders. No, we’re far more concerned with who’s blowing Justin Bieber than with a conflict in Ukraine having potentially significant worldwide consequences. Most Americans couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you narrowed the scope of the search to Eastern Europe AND held a gun to their head.
The one network which does do serious and in-depth reporting and analysis of events and issues- Al-Jazeera America- couldn’t attract an audience if Christiane Amanpour did her stand-ups naked from Tehran. Entertainment is king, and hard news isn’t sexy. It seldom comes with a protagonist, lots of action, and a resolution with a happy ending. It requires thoughtful analysis and presentation, as well as the ability to process information that often isn’t pleasant or easy to process.
The days when Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather, could be counted on to help us understand far-flung conflicts are long behind us. It’s far more likely that CNN will interrupt serious programming for an update on Justin Bieber’s legal troubles (Yes, that actually happened). We’ve been conditioned to expect our news to be commingled with entertainment, so understanding what’s going on in Ukraine is held to be of far less import than who’s going to win an Oscar.
I’ve lamented our seemingly inexorable race to what can reasonably be called our new idiocracy. With each passing day, I become more convinced that we’re already there. Television programming designed to appeal to the masses is dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common intellectual denominator. What we’re left with is designed to entertain and make us laugh far more than to educate and inform. As a collective, we don’t much care about what’s happening outside our borders, because it doesn’t impact our day to day lives. I’d like to be able to have a reasoned, rational, informed discussion of the crisis in Ukraine, but I fear that what most of us will take from this is:
Wait…Christiane Amanpour’s doing her reports naked??
