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Remember the old saying, “If it’s in the paper, it must be true!”? Today, many people treat television with the same amount of trust as newspapers in our parent’s time. Could this, combined with the growing television dependency of our youth, cause a problem for the 21st Century? Viewers’ blind trust, T.V. news that sells attitude and T.V. dependence may well lead to a society like Orwell’s 1984.
Viewers today take their news for granted. Why shouldn’t they? False news isn’t really the issue when we talk about trusting the news. It’s about believing the news that the T.V. gives us is important and relative to our nation and society. Some people like my family have quit watching the evening news because of its evident lack of substance.
Occasionally they hit some real national or international story (usually small glimpses) but mostly they are stories about Mary Sue’s experience fighting in North Dakota with the national sheepherder’s union in a dispute over milking rights. Real news, huh?
“News that sells.” A logo I wouldn’t be surprised to see posted at NBC studios in New York. The truth is that major networks sell us news that we want, or are morbid enough to sit and watch. This has given birth to a number of tabloid T.V. shows, like Dateline and Hard Copy, that sell us the evening news. More stories about Mary Sue’s battle over milking rights.
The facts are T.V. has no obligation to let us know what is important in the world today, and we have no obligation as viewers to view our media objectively, but we should. As “good” news dies out and our older generation leaves us at the reins, we need to live up to our responsibility as citizens to be informed. Quite frankly, our generation may very well be the dumb-dumb big brother society portrayed in Orwell’s 1984.
Einar Offerdahl, Senior |
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