If ignorance is truly bliss, then many American news-media outlets are helping to ensure we have one big, happy country.
The long-running joke has been that Fox News is a dumbed-down source of information, yet many other outlets have been consistently following suit.
The Fox joke, by the way, has a basis in reality: A PublicMind Poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University found that folks who watch Fox are more ignorant than those who don’t watch any news at all.
That’s pretty scary. What’s also scary is that Fox is the most-watched cable-news network.
If you really want to be terrified, however, take a gander at the results of all this dumbing-down. A Gallup Poll noted that nearly 20 percent of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth. A Zogby Poll found that 75 percent of Americans could name the Three Stooges, while only 40 percent can name the three branches of government.
Just as reality TV is not fully to blame for turning American intelligence into an oxymoron, we cannot put the full onus on the shoulders of the media. But they can take a major chunk.
With daily newspapers a dying breed, the Internet and TV have become the main sources of information. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they used the Internet as a source of news, and 78 percent tuned in to the idiot box, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life project.
On any given day, headlines from online sources include things like “Things to Buy After the Holidays,” “See What’s in Store for Capricorns This Month,” and “What You Missed on ‘Dancing With the Stars.'”
Links to mindless videos are also hot, with standard fare including 5-year-olds rapping, an elephant crapping, and cats playing Mozart on piano.
Television “news” shows feature two anchors telling really bad jokes to each other or, in at least one instance, actually sitting there and reading a newspaper aloud. When guests come around, they are likely to be reality-TV stars or celebrities who throw a TV set through the studio window if they don’t like the questions.
Hard-hitting interviews in general are a thing of the past, as shows are too fearful of offending their guests. If interviewers asked tough questions, no one would want to appear on their shows. Besides, if they didn’t have a fluffy interview lined up, they might have to do something drastic—like go out and find some news.
For the 50 percent of Americans who still get some news from that dinosaur called a newspaper, the situation isn’t much better. Tucson is a prime example, with only one daily paper serving a metro-area population of 1 million. Daily local-news pickings are slim, and greatly supplemented by wire-service stories. While this is not necessarily a dumbing-down, it is a factor forcing people to seek information elsewhere.
When Americans do turn elsewhere, there’s not much respite from the dumbing-down. Even big “news” magazines such as Time have fallen into the dumbing-down trap. Consider the Dec. 5 issue.
The cover of the edition released in Europe, Asia and the South Pacific featured an Egyptian man wearing a gas mask under the headline “Revolution Redux.” The U.S. edition featured the headline “Why Anxiety Is Good for You,” along with a cute cartoon.
What gives?
Lisa Bloom, author of Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, sums it up nicely in a Forbes article: The media “delivers crap to us; the crap mesmerizes us (i.e., it generates high ratings); the media gives us more, and—oops—we’ve all become dazzled and distracted and unfocused.”
Madison Ruppert, editor of the alternative-news site End the Lie (endthelie.com), takes it one step further. “The events of the world are shaped and spun in the American mainstream media to keep the people of the United States from becoming agitated or asking too many questions.”
Both theories hold water, as does the thought that many outlets have become scared stiff of doing anything politically incorrect, or that goes against the grain.
Alternative news sources have become one of the few places left to find anything near “All the news that’s fit to print,” rather than “only news that’s meant to amuse.”
This article appears in Dec 29, 2011 – Jan 4, 2012.
“Links to mindless videos are also hot, with standard fare including 5-year-olds rapping, an elephant crapping, and cats playing Mozart on piano.” — This sentence alone made my entire day.
It’s not just Fox-every major network/news source has been similarly co-opted and polluted. There’s a reason why KMSB and KOLD are imploding into one another and the rest are just dying on the vine: people are SICK of being lied to so that the station can retain its profits and/or license.
It’s also the reason these same entities have been frantically lobbying behind the scenes to reign in the internet and its pesky bloggers-they want to continue to lie with impunity by killing the competition. And like a chinese finger trap, the only appreciable effect is to draw the noose tighter around their necks, hastening their inevitable demise.
Bread and Circuses
I blew a fuse on Monday night when NBC Nightly News (Lester Holt) ran three consecutive “human interest” stories during the last 15 minutes of the show. My mother asked me why I was being so grumpy. With so much going on in the world today, even if it was a slow news day in the US (how about a piece on homelessness on the day after Christmas?) the rest of the world is imploding.
People in the US have no idea what’s going on outside their own neighborhoods. It’s frightening what people in this country don’t know, not only about their own country but about the world we live in. We are all interconnected. There’s more going on with Iran right now than the average person understands. Like how our Congress is provoking them into a war with stupid legislation. All these morons will hear is that maybe Iran will cause gas prices to rise because they will block the Strait of Hormuz and we will once again be in a war that we provoked. And the flock will follow.
Why can’t we have local (and, for that matter, national) journalists who will go out and actually REPORT news? I can tune around the radio and TV selections and hear the same story..verbatim..with no change.
My first word here points to a question lacking in most 30 second reports. WHY? It’s so bad many local TV and radio outlets cannot get the other basics into a story, either. WHO? WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? High school newspaper classed used to teach these basic points. Either the schools have lost how to do that (not surprising), or those talking heads have forgotten these absolute starting points of reportage.
Chris Limberis…please call down and give these people a clue!
“People in the US have no idea what’s going on outside their own neighborhoods. It’s frightening what people in this country don’t know, not only about their own country but about the world we live in” — crinkster
Indeed. Fortunately, outlets such as the BBC and yes, dare I say it, Al Jazeera English are available (mainly on the Internet, not so much TV) where one can find out (a) what’s going on and (b) what people other than media insiders and ‘pundits’ have to say about it.
It’s a cryin’ shame Rynski – newspapers, the main source of investigative journalism, have had to slash budgets and lay off good writers to remain viable to stockholders and ‘bottom liners’. ‘Digging’ up a good old fashioned scathing indictment on something takes time and money…commodities sorely lacking for the most part in this age of slacker journalism. Much easier to get the ‘facts’ for a fluff piece on Kim Kardasian or some other ‘much admired’ greedy dingbat.
Nice piece media maven. 🙂
This is another good column.
thanks, all, for input. it’s a definite cryin’ shame, radmax, exp. since digging for nuggets is part of the big fun of journalism. i pine for days gone by when you could actually do things like come nearer that 250 miles from the crime scene or actually talk to anyone who would talk rather than specified representatives within a company.
G. Dinardo – thanks!
J in Cochise – great quote, although i’ll bet some folks don’t even know what’s going on in their own nabes – unless, of course, it involves will smith’s giant trailer or other celeb-oriented ‘news.’ also agree with the joke of media ‘insiders’ as source of info. akin to putting ‘experts’ on the stand in court so they can agree with whomever is paying them more.
n7igv – i hear ya! so many times i’ll hear a news blurb (or, as you noted, the same blurb on multiple outlets) that won’t even say WHERE THE HECK the thing happened. drives me nuts, too.
crinkster – i’m with ya on the maddeningness. i caught a glimpse of a newscast in detroit over the holidays where the story consisted of planting an open car trunk full of gifts in a mall parking lot to see if anyone would steal anything. sigh. the ‘report’ lasted at least 15 minutes. double sigh.
Pima Mujer – hahahahha – you got it!
RJ Fletcher – chinese handcuffs is a great analogy – cannot WAIT for the demise. what is also maddening, however, is i writing a lot of freelance assignments where the only ‘sources’ allowed are big-name news outlets – when, as you noted, the real news and info lies elsewhere.
IPH – thanks!!! i can illustrate and frame that one for ya if you want (hahahhahahah). i can draw a mean elephant peeing.
enjoyed all the comments. happy new year to all.
typo alert!
please excuse the extra ‘i’ in: ‘is i writing a lot of freelance assignments’ – if i writing a lot of freelance assignments like that, i not getting lot of assignments – hahahahha.