Give Me Good World News or Give Me Death!

So, today I walked into my psychology class and one girl shouted, "OMG, Can you believe the snow storm yesterday??? Yeah, there were people out with snowblowers... geez can you believe we got hail in June. I almost didn't believe the front page of all the newspapers this morning..."

Normally, I would be just as astonished as the next person by hail in June, but that's not what bothered me about what she said. The idea that the FRONT PAGE of major newspapers had pictures of a pathetic snowstorm in June (that honestly only had about a 10 mile radius) instead of the headlines and pictures talking about the millions of Iranians protesting the election that took place last week, the possibility of fraudulent ballot counting, and that police (up until Monday) were beating protesters and journalists alike (one CNN camera man had to hide to keep from getting beaten with a nightstick by the police). The young generation of Iranians are furious that the current regime remained in office and even the Muslim clergy are calling for a recount (the results of which they will formally comment on in 10 days). Political strategists and experts from around the world are claiming that the numbers don't add up and that the results were announced long before they could have been known.

I don't claim to be the most informed person on World News, but if I hadn't watched the news last night, I would have read the paper this morning and thought that the most significant thing happening was a hail storm in Washington Township. And that's just so wrong.

I'm posting a portion of a book written by David Halberstam who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. This excerpt refers to the failure of the media to do their job and why we've allowed it to happen.

"... sometimes it creates a hopelessly shortsighted view of the future that is damaging both to the company and the society.

Take our media world, and particularly our television networks for examples. Of the many results of the end of the Cold War the amazing surge in the American economy, six thousand points in six years in the Dow during the Clinton years, the rise of nationalism and tribalism in certain parts of the world- the most surprising, and by far the least predictable, was the almost immediate and quite dramatic trivialization of the American political and media agenda, most especially the decline of the important in serious new, above all foreign news from our nightly television screens. It was as if the old geopolitical impulse that had preceded World War II and the Cold War, America apart from the rest of the world, had been restored, especially in an era where, because of the quantum breakthroughs in communications, the pull of home screen entertainment became so seductive. Of our many traditional freedoms was added a new one - the right not to be bored in your own home. We became something unique: a de-facto monopoly superpower, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, binging on self-involvement.

The people who ran the newsrooms in our television networks learned, all too easily, in the eighties that the country was less and less interested in foreign news. It was now considered boring. The world was no longer threatening. Foreign reporters were expensive, and worse, brought low ratings. But celebrity journalism, especially in the period of the end of the Cold War, when the country was binging on self-absorption, brought high ratings. People now cared desperately about the lives of celebrities. Would Tim stay married to Nicole? Would O.J. be convicted? Would Monica ever find true love and marry? If it was journalism at its worst then it was economically viable: celebrity journalism was good for the ratings, which was good for the stock, but of course bad for the country. The senior people who ran the network news empires neglected the cardinal rule of a great editor - the need to balance what people want to know with what they need to know." - War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam

I'm all for the celebrity journalism (I follow Twilight news like the complete freak that I am) but not on the front page of newspapers and not during prime time news hours.

Things of the Day: Everything is Amazing right now, and nobody is happy...

Soothing Music: One and Two.