I wonder

A theme I've touched on repeatedly at this blog is that Americans pay way too much attention to trivial bullshit and not enough attention to important things. A lot of the time I blame this on the American public, and a lot of the time I blame it on the media. I wonder which is fair. Thinking out loud here...

One can argue that the media is just a consumer product giving the public what it wants, and there is probably some element of truth to that, but I wonder how much. The study that showed Fox News devoting much more coverage to Anna Nichole Smith than other networks relative to the Iraq War, and the recent press feeding frenzy over Paris Hilton's incarceration are prime examples of news media choosing to cover meaningless bullshit. Basically, massive corporations that own the networks make strategic choices, and those choices drive public demand, at least somewhat.

I bet that if you surveyed the American public, the results would show that they think news programs should devote more coverage to substantive issues and less to gossip. That doesn't mean there isn't a demand for gossip, but people know where the tabloids and E! channel are. The whole infotainment phenomenon isn't something they welcome on the 'respectable' news programs. But, people aren't so concerned about it that they demand changes, and they get sucked into the addictive superficial story lines and passively go along with it.

So to the original question of blame, as always it probably isn't fair to just blame one party. And that means that you can't only blame the public. The media makes choices, and America is a relatively captive audience. But until we fight back and demand better reporting, we won't get it (at least not on TV).

The ironic thing is that I think what is actually going on in the world right now is more interesting that Anna Nichole and Paris combined, in the same train wreck sort of way. Just about everything our government does is a huge fucking disaster, and it would be funny if it weren't so tragic. That is a riveting story line. Why won't more reporters try to tell it?