Don't Eat Yellow Journalism

by Paul Wilson

"The bubble-headed bleach blond comes on at five,
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eyes,
It's interesting when people die,
Give us dirty laundry."
-from the song "Dirty Laundry"

Recently, the California Institute of Technology announced the discovery of a "10th planet" in our solar system. While it may be a while before we must update those 1950's science textbooks, this is still a momentous event. And, in that spirit, we have added American mythology to the Roman gods, immortalized in the previous nine, by dubbing the new planet, "Xena," its single moon, "Gabrielle." Thus, we ensure that our own god, Television, will be forever represented in the cosmos.

What better example could we choose for our modern culture?

In an age when reality TV has replaced...well, reality; When telephone numbers in movies must begin with "555," to prevent fans from calling the characters, where does fiction end and reality begin?

No one has blurred this line more than the new media.

Before the concept of 24-hour news, information was packaged to go with our meals, in easy-to-digest, 30-minute time slots. Because time was limited, a news story had to be both accurate and important, to justify squeezing it in to the broadcast. This "just the facts" motif was not designed for entertainment value, but to inform. The predecessors of our modern newscasters were dry, sober, succinct...and objective.

Try to imagine Walter Cronkite interviewing a political pundit, cutting him off because his liberal viewpoint was "absurd." Picture Edward R. Murrow, declaring that a man acquitted on a murder charge was "obviously guilty."

With so much time to fill, today's "reality news" networks do not report the news, so much as dissect it. A story will begin before any facts are even known, with opinions and conjecture filling the void. Rumors and innuendo are the story, until such time as the truth starts to drift in.

Entertainment over substance has turned us into voyeurs, peeking through keyholes, waiting for something...anything...to happen.

Truth has, indeed, become relative. By sensationalizing the news, for the sake of ratings, the networks deprive us of true information. The whole world saw Micheal Jackson turn up for court in his pajamas, but how many of us saw the emasculation of the Kyoto Accord by the U.S.? The Amber Alert is running rampant, with an apparent epidemic of blue-eyed, blond girls disappearing. But where are the stories about the scores of Latino and African-American women and children missing each year?

Not since the 1890's has our journalism been so filtered, one-sided and just plain fabricated. The cable news networks are at the mercy of their sponsors and their owners (Does Rupert Murdoch own them all, yet?). The hand-picked White House Press Corps is at the mercy of Scott McClellan, Press Secretary, who appears to know the questions before they are asked.

And we, the public, are at the mercy of our current administration. In what is, possibly, the worst closed-door policy we have ever seen from a president, we are fed smoke and mirrors, while the truth is hidden behind "national security." In effect, we are told to "pay no attention to that man behind the curtrain."

As our lives become more isolated; As we withdraw to the relative safety of the virtual world and hide from the dangers of the outside world (can anyone say Matrix?), our only link to humanity becomes information...And we hunger for it. No longer satisfied with what happened today, we must know what happened ten minutes ago.

Information is the new drug of choice.

Those who disseminate information prey on our addiction. Like candy to a starving child, we gobble up what they toss us, with no thought to its nutritional value. And we are satisfied enough to come back for more.
Thankfully, we do have one saving grace, in our quest for the truth. We have the internet. But you have to know where to look. AOL, the Wal-Mart of service providers, has as much censorship and lip service as the big news networks.

Don't be afraid to leave the path. Google every chance you get. Find the blogs. These areas of the net have their own problems with opinion over fact, but they also contain valuable information. So valuable that they have the leaders of the world very worried. This free exchange of ideas is what the internet was designed for...And what the world's governments don't want.

In fact, a move is under way to control, regulate and otherwise censor the internet. Governments like China and North Korea, that have a tight reign on their people, are especially fearful. Our own country's leaders are beginning to worry, as well. As bloggers continue to grow in popularity and the truth is spread ever wider, our leaders are coming under closer scrutiny.

We Americans must read news stories from other countries. Find websites from London, Iraq or Thailand. Talk online to people from China or Yugoslavia. By comparison, we learn similarities, as well as differences. And we ethnocentric Americans just might find out just how little we know about the world outside our borders.

The time has come to replace nationalism with globalism. This is the way to prevent wars and terrorism (and wars on terrorism).

To crave knowledge should be Man's true goal. But we must make sure that knowledge is genuine. We cannot be satisfied with fluff. After all, if American Idol makes the front page, how hard is it to hide the truth on page twenty?