Allow me to begin with a confession: I find cable news absolutely repulsive. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone for whom this confession isn’t true.
But my repulsion of the daily cognitive dissonance of the media — most notably Fox News and MSNBC — isn’t entirely due to their “fair,” “balanced” and “forward-leaning” reporting styles.
Home for such towering characters of comedic inspiration as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Chris Mathews, Ed Schultz and, of course, Glenn Beck, these networks have simply become a microcosm of our low standards, as a nation, for journalistic integrity.
It seems as if even cable news has taken up the task of contributing to an already established cultural divide in our country.
While Fox News is busy metaphorically fornicating with patriotism, MSNBC can’t help but to foster the image of latte-drinking elites, both in turn further dividing an already divided nation.
Meanwhile, the admixture of these two corporate mouthpieces — with few notable exceptions like PBS, Democracy Now and The New York Times – has left America with very little honest and credible press.
In the last 30 years, our country has increasingly become more receptive to and accepting of hyperbole over objectivity, sensationalism over facts and reporting on the basis of ideology over real journalism.
Marginalized along the same cultural divisions of left and right Americans, our media has not simply morphed into entities of continued ignorance, but indeed promoters of anti-intellectualism and lazy journalism.
I wonder whether it is our collective lack of standards for journalism that has given rise to these brainwashing machines or their mere existence that has driven us, as a nation, toward two cultural polar opposites.
It is peculiar to me why we should even need news pundits. Why do we need the stereotypical analyses of Chris Mathews or the paranoid fantasies of Glenn Beck?
Have we become so divided along the left and right lines that even news needs to be catered according to our ideological needs?
Occupied with concerns of the government meddling in our personal lives, we seem to have overlooked how corporate-owned media has taken up the task of thinking for us.
One tells us the government is evil and we should protect ourselves against it by buying gold, while the other tells us how government is good, urging us to thrive in it with a purchase of life insurance.
One reports, falsely, how Obama’s trip to India costs $200 million a day while Americans are looking for work, while the other tells us Hurricane Katrina is evidence for former President George W. Bush’s racism.
What’s peculiar is how I hear a lot of people express the very same distaste for our media on a daily basis.
I think if there is any problem in our country that we as a society are empowered to fix, it is this problem of no integrity in our media.
In collective expression of our discontent for their political pandering, we can simply stop watching these networks.
We can stop watching their pathetic excuse for news, driving their viewership down, which in turn will drive their ad revenue down, which will hopefully make them realize we aren’t sheep in need of herding.
We must realize that until we have an unbiased media we won’t have a government accountable to the people.
Sohail can be reached at sbayot@asu.edu
