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The press deserve better from you. Tell your story right.
Every day for each of us starts with attending to our own most pressing needs or wants, before considerations of anything else.
Get a shower, have breakfast, get the kids off to school, go to work (if fortunate enough to have a job), worship (or not), pay the bills; spend some time with family & friends, etc.
After that and at some points in between perhaps, we concern ourselves with other considerations. Some of us concern ourselves with entertainment and celebrity in all its forms. Some of us concern ourselves with local or national politics. Some of us concern ourselves with environmental issues, or social justice issues. There are lots of things to give thought to.
Some things that are thought of as more "weighty" issues, might be considered as too complex, or a waste of time, because the "powers that be" control the agenda. It's also very easy to want to relax and let someone else do the critical thinking on matters that appear to be beyond our control.
I believe that a lot of this mentality can be traced to how our mass media handles substantive issues. When very little is heard or seen about a subject, it doesn't have an opportunity to resonate with the public conscious. This appears to be intentional behavior on the part of our mass media.
Find the sensational headline item and cover it from every conceivable angle, while ignoring or giving limited coverage to other stories which, while lacking "excitement" may be critical to the public good. This dynamic only appears to change when the "powers that be" seek to manufacture public consent for some initiative that the public might otherwise not be inclined to view favorably.
The financial crisis of 2008 comes to mind. This was a story long in the making, but there were not significant amounts of reporting prior to the "crisis" about the potential for such an event. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the coverage of any "crisis potential" paled to what was done when the moment was upon us, and it was necessary to convince large numbers of people to support a "bailout" of financial institutions that was originally pegged at $800 billion dollars.
Once the moment was upon us, all the focus was on the necessity to fork over $800 billion with no questions asked. There were no other options presented, beyond financial Armageddon, and how we reached this moment was apparently irrelevant.
This was what our mass media presented, and this was what most of us ultimately believed, since no other facts were presented on the same scale as the need for the bailout.
We often elevate the trivial, while consigning critical issues to virtual oblivion. Compare the coverage of the Academy Awards Ceremony to something like the dangers posed to our water supply from the process known as "fracking." I think you would find high numbers of the population who are at least familiar with "the Oscars," and significantly lower numbers of the population who were familiar with "fracking."
Now I understand escapism, and relaxation, and not being able to spend every minute staying up to date on the latest critical everything going on. But if our mass media lived up to their responsibility to report on stories that impact the public good with a similar amount of energy that's reserved for entertainment/celebrity events, then we would be much better informed.
It's the difference between one having to seek out important information and having important information presented to you as a matter of course by our mass media.
I suppose this raises the question of who determines what's "important information," but a steady diet of trivia leaves all of us ill prepared when big decisions need to be made on critical matters.
I'm a singer songwriter exploring the human condition through song. I enjoy love songs, and party songs as much as the next person, but I also think that there should be songs about poverty, justice, the environment, politics, all the things that impact our lives. So in addition to writing about these things in songs, I also try to encourage conversation with my opinion on things that are happening. You might agree, you might disagree, but it's important to open space for dialogue.
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