As Rome fell in the early centuries of the Common Era (or A.D.) the citizens of the Empire did not care too much about what was collapsing around them because they were deluded by trivialities such as the famous games. It can be argued that the same thing is happening now in America, only with a different face. Carl Bernstein recently went to the Brunswick School of Journalism in Greenwich, CT to talk about the problem that is our media.
From 1010 WINS:
GREENWICH, Conn. (AP) -- A culture coarsened by celebrity news is increasingly to blame for inadequate public affairs journalism, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein recently told a group of students.
Newspapers are devoting fewer resources to issues of importance such as the Iraq war and potential abuses of the U.S. Constitution and more to the lifestyles of Donald Trump and Paris Hilton, he told students at Brunswick School in Greenwich on Thursday.
"The problems we have in news and journalism are about us not doing our job well enough,'' Bernstein said. "The ideal of providing the best available version of the truth is being affected by the dominance of a journalistic culture that has less and less to do with reality and context.''
Bernstein, 63, said he believes an "idiot culture'' is partly to blame for the dysfunction of political life in the United States.
"Idiot culture" sounds harsh, but the truth can often be that way. The average American is in no way affected by Britney Spears' custody battles or Lindsay Lohan's drug abuse but the war in Iraq, our worsening economy (no, the Dow Jones does not relate to even a fracture of the economic reality of a middle-class family) and the positions of the current crop of Presidential aspirants do.
Bernstein also blames the public for having an appetite for celebrity news though this is somewhat unfair. If the masses were told about what was truly going on in their country, quite a few people would start to get mad, get loud and finally start to do something to effect change in America.
|