Media - Mass Produced Hysteria

Since the events of September 11, is it just me or have our modern day news and current affairs programs become jaundiced or biased as a direct result of their competitive search for higher ratings?

September 11 saw for the first time an event that captured global attention for 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.  Many people questioned the need or the validity of showing the footage of the disaster ad-nauseum over and over again, but in hindsight I think it was warranted and fitting for the event.

But the downside of this is that the media became all too aware of their own self importance.  The line between presenting current affairs in a factual manner and presenting them as a rating grabbing story for public consumption has blurred.

Whilst all programs, and that includes news media, are subject to ratings and viewer opinion, I believe that the purpose for stories now going to air and in the format that they go to air in has changed dramatically.

By this I mean that news items are now becoming "events" and once the public attention wavers and the "event" no longer "rates" then it is removed from public viewing no matter what the story is actually in or containing.

And when an event is "in" according to the ratings polls, the story is presented as the next major world event to rival September 11.  In fact, if you want your story to gain instant media attention, mention the words "terrorism" or link it to the events of September 11 and you will have a posse of journos on your doorstep faster than you can say "Pulitzer Prize"!

By example, I give you the following events:

• East Timor

• Afghanistan

• Iraq

• North Korea Crisis

• Solomon Islands

Each of these events have been linked to the so called "War on Terror" and at the time, they were the most pressing events that had the brink on the edge of oblivion.  The media presented it as an event that if was not resolved in our favour could see the end of our way of life...

Yet what is common about these events?  They are still going on and they are still unresolved.  East Timor - Australian troops still maintain the peace whilst Indonesian militants plot revenge.  Afghanistan - it seemed everybody was familiar with Kabul and the end of the Taliban, yet we never hear of it today despite American military activity still taking place with Taliban militant groups still waging guerrilla war.  Iraq - the most reported war in history is now a daily 3 minute bulliten each evening about a car bomb.  Iraq still has no power, water or self government.  Other than the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, we here little about that today.

Wasn't it only last month that the North Korean's were rattling the sabres and threatening world damnation via a nuclear winter?  What happened, did they go home??  We don't know because the media moved onto the Solomon Islands...  now there's a nice piece of work...

So you can see the trend.  World events are only world events whilst the public tunes in.  The public only tunes in because the media ram things down our throats as the next big thing in the world today only for it to mysteriously disappear the next...

So wake up people, we should not allow TV and newspapers to turn our world into a vox-pop of world changing snapshots...

Just give us the facts and save the bullshit...

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