“But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos […] It come indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.” – Neil Postman (Speech: Informing Ourselves to Death, October 11, 1990)
Watching a news channel with the sound turned off is an exercise in observing the dissonant, repetitious, and yet ever changing visual effects of television. Disconnected from any audio cues, the visuals play like a flickering bulb – a distraction that makes it hard to see things clearly. We see images of people, conflict, disaster; talking heads and hurricanes vying for attention. It gives the impression that the world is in flames, but information is the fix. Stay tuned.
It is all too easy to become transfixed on television – to become informed without understanding the issues. Many people I know claim to understand the world because they watch the news. They can recite trivia about the Japanese Prime Minister, Britain’s Labor Party, and the United State presidential election. Yet all these things are known in a vacuum. There is neither a contextual scaffold to frame the issues nor is there ever hard analysis about the implications of world events. The news is a cacophonous amalgamation of entertainment, trivia, and the happenings of nations, all occurring all the time, simultaneously. The march of events as seen through the lens of relevance has become an uncoordinated, disorganized gallop, and reporting on events and issues has become a race to disgorge and propagate opinions as well as facts, and often the two have become interchangeable.
The analysis of presidential debates occurs immediately after broadcast, and it seems clear that the talking points were drafted long before the candidates were having their hair done and makeup fixed and practicing in front of a mirror to look the part for the big audition. Becoming someone else is the key to acting. Likewise, critiques of the candidate’s character has become a series of impressions through a splitscreen. Ideas whither after the rhetoric, and we are no longer electing a leader who has a vision, but rather an actor who auditions well for the lead. The news forbids itself for looking too deep, and proclaims understanding and depth for its audience. The commentary of television is a glass ceiling for understanding – at the end of it all, we are still in the fish tank, the outside world obscured by reflections of graphics and stock tickers and news flashes.
How long can this be kept up? How long can attractive news anchors sitting behind desks and staring out with sparkling eyes behind a mask of cosmetics continue to speak the sweet nothings of irrelevance? In doing so, the machine of the news insulates people from the grim realities outside their homes the way a wall keeps a flock of sheep penned in and the wolves out. The wolves are discouraged by the wall, but the sheep are still its’ prisoner. The fear of the wolf deifies the wall as a protector. Such is the credence given to the mass media in the United States. It has become a wall used to align viewpoints of the viewing public – to put the fear of the wolves into the sheep and to keep the wolves at bay through insulation.
We have moved beyond being informed or being misinformed by false information. The television news is no longer about information, it is about worldbuilding; reconstructing a reality in its own image. An image viewed through bright lights, and talking points, with a new enlightenment coming up after every commercial break. Always after. Do not touch the dial.
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