Ostrich Removes Head From Sand

When I was a kid I didn’t like boxing. Boxing was that annoyance that sporadically interrupted my weekend TV time. Whenever there was a big match, my Dad and an otherwise forgotten neighbor suddenly became buddies and sent me on my way as they set up their snacks and chairs for at least 120 minutes of pugilistic performances. I didn’t like boxing at all. That is, until I met a boxer when I was in my late teens. Suddenly it was real and I developed an interest in it an even an appreciation for it.
Until recently I’d been like an ostrich with his head buried in the sand when it came to following the news. I got so sick of hearing nothing but bad news. Furthermore I didn’t have time to weed through the pages of celebrity gossip and other useless data. When it came to the American media, I agreed with Dr. Goodword and still do agree with him today when he says:
"... very few people in the US media are even familiar with the issues (where familiar means having read several books and dozens of articles on the subject). The result has been a rush to yellow journalism, unearthing scandals, embarrassing public officials for no ostensible reason.
The problem is that with 24-hour news and competition from every side, there simply aren’t enough scandals to fill the time and pages. So the media flog a long since dead horse and derive from the exercise nothing more than insipid vapors portrayed as news. In doing so, the media become less and less relevant.
An interesting bit of support for this last claim can be seen in the growth of the number of feature documentaries. I can remember when documentaries were considered boring films shown only in schools. Now, documentaries like “An Inconvenient Truth”, “The Corporation”, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”—to mention a few I’ve recently viewed—are receiving feature runs in commercial theaters. Why are they so popular all of a sudden? Because they bring us the news while CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC race to see which can dredge up the most inane event of the day.”

Years ago I decided that I would rather be uninformed if being informed meant knowing who was having who’s baby. I also got tired of hearing about people who were less fortunate than me because they come from a country with an affinity for infighting and corruption (as if there is no corruption in the US and Rodney King and everybody are just “getting along” fine). I just couldn’t be bothered. Tell me the weather forecast and I was done. I just couldn’t be bothered.

Then, I met a journalist. I immediately developed a different perspective of the media. Suddenly it was real and I developed an interest in it and even an appreciation for it. I’m allowing a regular stream of “news” into my life now. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t’ believe everything I read, and I still have to weed through the junk. I read news now, but I tread far beyond the rags financed by American conglomerates. I try to expose myself to a broader spectrum of propaganda. Oops! Did I say propaganda? I meant “news” of course. Like the New York Times slogan says "All the News That’s Fit to Print."

I’m still living in the climate that turned me into that ostrich, but just as meeting that boxer 20 years ago made boxing worth a look, meeting my new friend, the TV station editor, has made journalism somehow more humane to me. Today, I try to read a bit every day, but I don’t fool myself into following the news blindly. Deep down I know that as wonderful as journalists may be…with all their good intentions, and the sacrifices many of them make, some paying with their lives, in the end, there is still a limit to how much control they have over the final outcome. They may have every desire to bring a great story to the screen, or the page, one that reaches out to the people and enlightens them, but in the end we can’t be sure we’ve got the real story.
Isn’t that right Mr. Editor?