the other side of the trillion $ coin... objective reporting?

It seems, lately, that there is more and more troubling news flooding into our lives on a regular basis. Whether is is each new revaluation in the coming economic apocalypse, another gunman on a rampage,  some child star/ roll model/ whatever getting high or showing too much skin, or some other example of society's moral fabric being prematurely distressed and tattered like a pair of designer jeans…

In a movie, it was once prophesied, that "If You Book Them, They Will Come." Now, if you are a concert junkie you may know this does not always hold true…

...but if you step back and look at the abstract here, you can notice an odd phenomenon. If you take the energy to look for examples of some thing or concept… you will start to see those examples more and more frequently…

Let's use green automobiles for a metaphor here… If you start looking for little green cars… all of the sudden it will appear as if there are green autos everywhere! How is it possible that there were all these greens autos allover and you never noticed them before?

Well, two things are happening. First, you're looking for green cars, thus when you see them they stand out in your mind mores than if you weren't looking for them. Second, because you are NOT looking for white, blue, black, red etc. cars, they will appear less dramatically in your mind than the green ones you are looking for… So these two instances not only make one notice the green cars more than usual independent from each other, but they act upon each other in a synergistic way resulting in a greater total effect.

So bringing this back to media's reports on the state of the world… If you look for sensationalist happenings… you'll naturally notice more of them… and naturally you will notice less coverage of positive and/ or uplifting stories…

Compounding this, is the speed and accessibility of media coverage and the incursion of social media as "news" and/ or reporting...

We have greater and more instantaneous coverage of events via the internets… So we have several things going on here…

First, the limiting nature of speedy reporting… When you try to report as fast as possible there is a symptom of this tendency that is counter productive, there is no time for diligence. By that I mean that if the goal is to publish a story as fast as you can in order to get "the scoop," there is a natural inclination to use the first knee-jerk observations as fact, without taking the time to investigate more than just the initial observations. So any attempt at a well rounded picture is voided as that would take too long. Opinion will supersede fact.

The other dark reality of speedy reporting is that any event that connote be explained in less than a certain time constraint is likely to be skipped over, or simplified to the point of absurdity. Three major current examples; national and/or global economic issues, nutrition/ health, pollution/ climate destabilization. Even less likely to be tackled is how all these issues  are actually interdependent.

Lastly (but by no means comprehensibly nor finally), is that with the nature of 24 hour TV news and the vastness of the internets there is no good way to differentiate between those that are actually trying to report honestly (remember how journalism is best served objectively rather than subjectively?) from those who are totally full of horseshit and bile… Nothing is sacred anymore, well not that anything ever really was…

(but there is always a dim hope in the corner of this big dark room to bring something lovely back from the dead)

Like legitimately false and humorous reporting…

The converse of that would be welcome too…

But Orwell's nightmares are alive and well…


So, i'll just go make a sandwich and watch some cartoons.

Strovia.