MEDIA – The SPIN Doctors of Democracy
"If you take anything to an extreme, it becomes its opposite," my college philosophy professor often said.
Media's obsession with informing the American public is an example of this. Not free speech but an abuse of it. Media, and particularly political Media, doesn't educate us, it schools us. With non-stop news, we no longer need to think. Opinions are formed for us. We only need to tune in.
Like so much of Washington, Media doesn't serve the nation; it feasts on it. Once purposeful, Media has lost its way over the years. Going from credible to industrial. Churning out breaking news like never before. Keeping the nation on edge for the next bit of information that, at the end of the day, is of zero value to us personally.
America is a nation hooked on the white noise of news that has no limits and few constraints. This condition is only made worse by election cycles that are the longest in the universe. Canada, the U.K., Australia, France, Japan, Singapore, and Mexico are in line with the rest of the democratic world, with an average campaign duration of 44 days. Many U.S. campaigns exceed this by a factor of ten, running for well over a year!
In the U.S., elections have gone from intermittent to constant. No longer do they serve the common good as much as the bank accounts of Media titans and the coffers of those running for election and re-election. This is not democracy at work but democracy in overload. Driven by money and, on balance, of negative value to the general public. What we might gain in knowledge from Media is negated by a constant sense of fear.
We don't question the need to be the first to know. We act it out. When staring at our phone or the T.V. (that runs hours every day), we lose the moment. There's no now in our lives. No time to relax, reflect, look into your partner's eyes, have a conversation with your kids, or talk to a neighbor. We stop thinking because we have Media experts who do that for us. All we need to do is tune in and tune out.
In Media, educating the public takes a backseat to provoking it. What better way to build and retain an audience. "Negativity and escape domain positivity and approach," by 2-3 times according to Nobel Prize economist Daniel Kahneman. I think Media knows this fact better than Kahneman and has mountains of data to prove it. They know an audience isn't as attentive to the topic of good news as it is to breaking news.
Good news or education programs don't generate a fraction of the profit of breaking news, particularly when that breaking news is connected to one of the many names we've learned to hate.
Around the clock, we're updated on what's happening in Washington, the latest vote count, and reminders of what's to come. Every bit of news seemingly as critical as the moon landing. Interpreted, reinterpreted, and repeated by a roundtable of media elites who school us in what we need to know. It's not really what we need to know but what Media says we need to know.
Now that the 2022 elections are behind us, Media's profit-driven model of democracy demands we turn our attention to 2024. Now more than ever, they say, democracy is on the line. Indeed, Media pushes it there in partnership with a political system that's as money-dependent as Media.
Voter fatigue and disharmony is no obstacle to Media's revenue targets. Nor is it of concern to those who took a Constitutional oath to provide for the "general welfare" of the country.
Getting politicians to talk is cheap and easy. Media doesn't have to pay them, yet politicians are always available for an interview to build their brand, raise money, and keep the country informed.
Disguised as news to inform the American public, Media provides a free non-stop platform for politicians to raise billions of dollars to spend on Media ads. It's a vicious circle that grows bigger with each election. According to OpenSecrets, in 2020, over $14 billion was spent on political campaigns. (Most of this money going to ads.) This year, according to NPR, almost hit $17 billion was spent on political campaigns, despite it being a mid-term election year. Media pretends to scrutinize politicians, but actually, it dances with them.
Alongside big banks, big pharma, and big defense contractors, Media's partnership with politics is another cancer infecting the American nation. Media would be informing the country better if it returned to its boring past: 30 minutes of news in the morning, 30 minutes in the evening, and 30 minutes at night. Telling us what we need to know and then giving us the space to think about it and to form (or not form) opinions of our own.
Today, the best and brightest of America don't inform; they saturate. As a result, America's attention span is being put through a meat grinder.
The habits of big business and Media are beyond our control, as is greed itself. However, we can control out-of-control spending, and its consequences, by removing Congress from its authority over spending and returning that responsibility to state government. Not a perfect solution, but perfect enough to break the bad habits of Congress and return it to its job of serving we the people.
