The Circus Comes to Town

A raging gunbattle erupted in central Baghdad yesterday, wounding 16 GIs. A human bomb blew up 16 police recruits. Another 52 were found dead along the roadsides. The President and Congress are fighting over war funding. Polls say Iraq is the most pressing concern for Americans today.

So I turned on the news today oh boy. And what did I see? Don Imus. Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. The Duke sex case.

Anyone notice the disconnect? Serious things are happening — mortgage problems, massive layoffs, spreading violence, yet all the TV news shows us are circuses, distractions, phony controversies.

What gives?

40 years ago we saw the war in Vietnam on our TV screens every
night. We saw what was happening in our world, what was important in
our world. We saw the riots, we heard the music.

Now there is this strange disconnect. It’s as though the TV medium is
afraid to engage us, afraid to challenge us, afraid to shake us from
complacency.

This is the way media act in countries under occupation. This is the
way the Soviet media acted under communism, the way most Arab and
African media functions today. This does not serve democracy, either as
a cause or as a system of government.

The only good news is that this is not all the media.

We have this
medium, this vast, worldwide medium. Where you can find the news, about
the true depth of the pet food scandal, about the perversion of Justice, about voter suppression,
about global warming and all the rest of it.

And with this medium you
can take action. This is not a passive medium, it’s an intimate medium. You can use this medium to respond, you can use it to argue, you can put your money
where your mouth is and find like-minded folks with which to put your
ideas into action.

What the circus on our screen proves is that the TV screen is
obsolete. It is no longer a mirror to reality, but a fun house mirror.

Reality we must find ourselves. And we are finding it. Thanks to this medium, the Internet.