There is a lot going on in the world right now, but then again, there always is. Unlike previous eras, we now live in a time where information can travel through a variety of paths to reach our conscience. At first, it was just the morning paper or word of mouth, then came the television and evening news, then came 24 hour news, then came the internet. It now takes a very conscious and dedicated effort to avoid the news, and even if you stay away from every news site imaginable, you will still undoubtedly see signs of the times from a friend's Facebook posts.

So now that we are an incredibly "informed" world, we should all be smarter and make better decisions about everything, right?

Eh, I'm not so sure.

If you haven't seen Anchorman II (the sequel to the movie Anchorman), then you should check it out, it doesn't quite have all the magic of the first one but I think it does a fairly good job. Why do I bring up the sequel to a silly Will Ferrell comedy movie? Well, the movie actually has some fairly clever satire thrown in amongst humor more typical for the genre. In it, the main protagonist Ron Burgundy (the anchorman) gets a new gig at a "brand new" 24 hour news station (the film is set in the early '80s). At first, people think the concept of 24 hour news is stupid, because how can you fill all that air time with relevant stories? Ron Burgundy's answer: tell people what they want to hear, and also show things like car chases and funny dogs and stuff. There is also a part where a story about an airline with faulty parts on their planes, which is not aired because the owner of the news station also owns that airline.

So, this brings me to my thought of this post: news is a business. And just like any other business, they want to make money. How do they make money? By people watching their station or going to their website. Why would people want to watch boring news instead of a well scripted television show? They make the news entertaining. So, who cares if they take something that is boring and make it exciting, isn't this a good thing because it gets more people involved? Well, I'm all for everyone being well informed and involved in civic duties, but I would prefer if it was for the right reasons.

In Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent, they assert that the media serve as a "lens" and a "filter" to protect their greater interests. By "lens", they mean that the media tend to magnify certain stories to serve their needs, and by "filter" they mean that the media does not report very heavily on stories that might compromise their interests. By doing this, the media tell no lies, but aren't exactly telling the whole truth either. This is crucial. See, there are too many means for accountability these days, so if a media source went out and blatantly lied about everything, then they would be caught and their integrity greatly compromised. By doing the "lens and filter" approach, they can maintain their integrity because they haven't actually done anything wrong (legally speaking).

In Manufacturing Consent, this theory is given examples relating to American foreign policy and reporting. An example would be if an enemy of the U.S. does something bad, then it would be heavily reported on, whereas if they did something good, then it would be reported on very little if at all. That can also be applied in reverse to an ally of the U.S.

So, this makes sense, but what about issues that have a less obvious interest, and even seem to have positive outcomes? An example might be how perhaps a big company was doing something bad, and the media reported on it a lot and got the company to either change its ways or shut down entirely. That seems like a good thing, right? The media saw a problem and used their power of information to cause a change. Well, my answer is that it could be a good thing, but as anyone who has seen Spiderman will tell you, "with great power comes great responsibility."

So how could this be a bad thing? Well, I used to work at a place that had a motto of solving problems, and I would sometimes joke that they only solved the problems that they created. Have you ever watched an infomercial? It will undoubtedly show a black-and-white video of someone failing miserably at a pretty normal task, and then show you that same person doing that same task with great success because of the product the infomercial is trying to sell. I always watch these and say to myself, "is that task really as hard as they are making it look, or is that person just wildly incompetent?" In this case, the infomercial is trying to make you buy their product by suggesting that you need it, because the alternative is a nightmare. In a sense, they are creating a problem because they have a solution.

How can this be applied to news? Well, look at any one of the "viral" stories that have propagated over the last few years. They probably feature a problem. Perhaps they feature a solution that could have been a result of people rallying against the problem. It might end with a positive resolution that leaves you with a good feeling about the world and life in general. If it does, then the media has succeeded, because they kept you intrigued about this story the entire time, and you had to go to various sources to learn about it. Because of this, they made money. Now, what if it is a slow day, and there is nothing really eventful that is happening in the world? Well, they need a way to fill space, so they will have to create something. Creativity is usually considered a good thing, but I don't really want it applied to the way I interpret the world, and you shouldn't either.

You probably have a friend that at one time has muttered the phrase (or posted it as a Facebook status) "why does drama always follow me wherever I go?" You may then chuckle and think to yourself, "it doesn't follow you, you create it." This is what the media has to do to stay afloat, they have to create drama if there is nothing interesting going on. This is partly a side effect of living in a first world country, life is fairly comfortable and we sometimes get bored with the lack of chaos.

So this brings me back to the whole "is this a good thing?" Well, if the media sheds light on problems that have been around for years and causes people to take action in a productive way to solve these problems, then that is a good thing. But what if the things aren't really problems and we are just wasting time and resources in order to solve them? What if they are actually positive things that the media is distorting into being problems, and we are actually making everything worse by "solving" them. What if they are real problems, but pale in comparison to much bigger problems that are not being reported on as heavily? These are three very real possibilities to me, and ones that I think we should all take into account when we start to get riled up about whatever issue is going on.

With all this being said, I would just like to take a moment to state some examples of things that I personally believe receive a lot media coverage: plane crashes, shark attacks, public shootings, possible pandemics, anything race-related, famous people doing stupid things (this includes political figures doing stupid things, massively amplified if an election is near), ways that your children are in danger, and, of course, terrorist attacks (which I guess could be lumped in with public shootings, but seems to have different connotations in my mind).

Now, all these things receive large amounts of air-time for a reason: they are rare and/or they are guaranteed to elicit an emotional response. Unfortunately, mass media coverage seems to create a possible false impression that these things are commonplace. What happens when it does this? People develop fears of flying, fears of swimming in the oceans, fears of going to public places, fears of touching things because they don't want to catch a disease, distrust of government officials, and fears of other races. Fear is a very driving motivator for a variety of activities, some of which are good and others probably not so good. If you are a Star Wars fan, you'll recall Yoda saying that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. While it might not always go through this progression, it is easy to see how something like fearing another race can eventually cause you to hate that race. I think that fear is natural and something that everyone has experienced, but you can't let fear consume your life to the point where you start to make rash actions based on it.

I will leave you with this list of things to think about:

• Try to remember that bad things happen in the world and this is unavoidable.
• Sometimes bad things are a result of single solitary events or perhaps the manifestation of larger problems.
• The media will likely try to make you think it is the latter, because this makes for a juicier (and longer) story.
• Remember that the media is a business and will make decisions (consciously or not) based on how they can financially gain from them.
• Before you make any big life decisions or formulate any beliefs about things you see in the news, try to inspect the sources and determine if it is really as big of a deal as they are making it out to be.
• Many times the events shown in the news are there because they are an exception to normal events, not the norm.

And just so you know, I'm not trying to be insensitive or imply that there aren't any problems in the world, I'm just trying to suggest that some things are over-dramatized.

So go forth and make your own decisions. If you feel strongly that something is a problem and you have done the research to back that up, then pursue a solution. If you believe something because you saw a news article and all your friends are talking about it, then question it further. The truth is not always so easy to see through the various lenses and filters of media, but keep looking and perhaps you will find it.

References:

Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N. (1988) Manufacturing Consent :The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon Books

Photo (c) 2013 (Mick Baker)rooster and made available under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License 2.0