Our Society's Sickness

While there are many wonderful aspects to our free government and society, there is also an inherent danger in the capitalism on which it's built...and one we must always guard against: that is that the almighty dollar may become more important than the people it is supposed to serve...it becomes the master, not the servant.

I have begun to think of this more and more with recent news coverage, particularly in light of the recent horror at Virginia Tech. This may seem a strange connection, but not if you read the articulate, well thought out essay by Alice Mathias, a Dartmouth college student, that was published in today's New York Times:

http://thegraduates.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/a-killers-media-wish-fulfilled/

Essentially, her point is this: the opportunity to make money off of any story or event will oftentimes lead us to make choices that are not necessarily for the best public good. Members of the media have an increasingly important responsibility to communicate news without, shall we say, "relishing" it.

And that's just what Fox, MSNBC, CNN and even the major network news shows do these days. They beat a story to death through sensationalism and, in the process, immunize us, the viewers, from its true effect. Why do they do this? Because they know it will appeal to all of our baser instincts. Like the ancient Romans gathering to the Coliseum to watch deadly games from a safe distance, we gather in our living rooms day and night to gaze at our televisions and catch all the news that is so often anymore not only not fit to print, but not fit to be seen.

When NBC dangled the killer's videotaped rant out there, how many of us resisted tuning in? I know I didn't. Am I the better for it? Not really. I think I'll begin tuning into ABC again where I hear they are taking a more responsible approach to news coverage.

So what does this have to do with presidential politics? Not much except that, for the most part, we get our view of these candidates through the media. So we should remember that they're likely to present what is most saleable...not necessarily what is most true about a candidate.