Random Thought #6
Anyone who knows me would say I’m a technology person. I love electronic gadgets. I love the internet and used to think it was the solution to all our problems. The internet provides endless information on nearly everything. What more could the human mind require? However, recently I’ve been thinking about how the combined information of television, the internet, newspapers, radio, etc. is actually combining together to create massive disinformation. There is so much clutter, skewed information, flat out lies that no one knows which side is up any more. Thankfully, moving to New York has introduced me to a life outside of cable television. What have I discovered? PBS. I never before thought to turn to PBS for quality, honest and straight to the point news & discussion on important topics.
Today I discovered the weekly Bill Moyers Journal. The show today was scarily on topic with my above thoughts about disinformation. It might have been the best piece of journalism that I’ve ever seen. See for yourself by watching Media Analysis & Rage on the Radio (I’m sure the rest of it is incredibly eye opening too).
I’ll end with two paragraphs from Bill Moyers’ speech at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform.
What does it matter? Why a media anyway? I’m going to let an old Cherokee chief answer that. I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before we moved to Texas, of the tribal elder who was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, “It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The boy took this in for a few minutes and then said to his father—to his grandfather, “Which wolf won?” The old Cherokee replied simply, “The one I feed.” Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And media provides the fodder.
So it is that democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it. Democracy without accountability creates the illusion of popular control while offering ordinary Americans only cheap tickets to the balcony, too far away to see that the public stage has become just a reality TV set. Nothing more characterizes corporate media today, mainstream and partisan, than disdain toward the fragile nature of modern life and indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.
