Tag: mainstream media

Headlines With a Chance of Substance

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Image via Pixabay.com

I began collecting headlines*

2017

Why Does T Remain So Witless About the World?

Will T be the Death of the Goldwater Rule?

What Did DT learn in  Texas?

What Would War With North Korea Look Like?

Could T alone kill Obamacare?

2018

The Beginning of the End for T?

Will T Fire Rod Rosenstein?

Is T’s Vanity a Threat to the Economy?

Will T Abandon a Reckless Saudi Prince?

Is Fraud Part of T Organization’s Business Model?

Does T Think The War on Terror Is Over?

Is Optimism Dead in the T Era?

2019

Can T Invoke Emergency Powers for the Wall?

Does Congress Care About T’s Emergency?

Is America T’s Banana Republic?

Are We In A Constitutional Crisis?

Is T Provoking A War?

Will T Outsource the Border Crisis to Mexico?

 

Headlines have a several functions: they should grab our attention, give us the gist of the topic, and make us curious enough to keep reading. In the digital attention economy, the most successful headlines elicit a flurry of clicks, followed by hungry eyeballs. That’s the goal. Hijacking the amygdala or viscerally activating your mirror neurons can all be strategically planned. Platforms that draw crowds know well what it takes to move the masses to click, comment and keep the attention machine running at high speed.

We’re tied up in this business model. In our attempts to stay informed, up to date, critically aware, we also click, click, click our way from one data mongering platform to the next leaving our digital breadcrumbs that will make others well off. Meanwhile these same platforms heap more oil on the dumpster fire of liberal democracies, and we all watch our precious civil liberties disintegrate before our very eyes. Somehow the profitable 1% will survive every political weather – they own our media, their power will not wane anytime soon.

And those headlines, increasingly designed “for your eyes only”, play us one song in 10,000 variations. It’s the song of inevitability, of market forces, of the End of Times. We listen over and over again because it’s ubiquitous and to be honest, it’s kinda catchy. Like the crime novel we can’t put down, we keep turning the pages of this ever unfolding horror story that doles out these pin prick closed questions: Will T do this? Can T do that? Each query a stab at our previously held beliefs about governance and decency and legality.

 

 

Here’s what we can do: Listen to folks who know these ropes. Take their advice, learn from their example.

Take the headlines for what they are: Click-bait with a chance of substance. Read carefully, astutely. Follow Mike Caulfield who is my go-to expert in all things media literacy, especially fact-checking and avoiding disinformation.

Above all recognize that there is no need to go it alone. There are good people all over the internet doing good, meaningful things. There are helpful resources and we can support each other in finding and applying those resources. I resent the complicity of mainstream media in surrendering so fully to the tug of the attention economy and away from shoring up democratic norms through transparency, critical reporting and by countering bigotry. But I see this is where are and not elsewhere.

My illusions are no more. The scales have fallen from my eyes. The trouble is deep and so are our resources if we get our act together.

 

*2-3 times per week since mid 2017, I have consented to The New Yorker sending me updates to my mailbox on their latest editions. And through the headlines, I noticed patterns. The headlines above are a selection of e-mail headers that I received.

Still Not Funny – On not giving in to humorlessness

I’ve been moved by a number of things I’ve read in these last few days. Blog posts, Twitter threads, news analysis and more. I’m listening. I’m processing and wondering.

I work with children during the day. I insist that we work to be fair to each other and kind and respectful; that we play our games safely and involve everyone. If I raise my voice, I have told them, it probably is because I have a concern about safety. I’m afraid someone might be hurt. They understand this even if it may surprise them in the moment. We have a relationship and trust each other.

My 9 year old and I were talking at the dinner table. He has a gift for the dramatic and was applying it while assembling his hamburger fixings. When I mentioned his tendency to dramatize, he responded: “You didn’t raise me to be humorless.”

Humorless is a interesting word choice for a 9 year old.

It’s true and he’s right, I haven’t raised him or his older brother to be humorless. On the contrary, humor is central to our relationships. This is good to remember as I feel my humor running low these days.

I’m frustrated by a lot of what I see in mainstream media, particularly in its highly conciliatory coverage of the US President-elect. There is so much focus on what he says when we know after a nearly 2 year campaign that he fabricates, lies and denies on a regular basis. His word is never his bond.

The unbelievable rush to generate clicks overrides every design to report with integrity. The examples are far too many and egregious to list. Painting neo Nazis as young, stylish folks, actually discussing if Jews are human on CNN, raising the question if the Vice President-elect was “harassed” by the cast members of Hamilton…and on and on. I keep shaking my head –  although disbelief is not an option I’ve told myself already.

I cannot laugh. I keep wondering – where are those helpers that Fred Rogers’ mom always told him to look out for? Where are the opposition leaders among our elected representatives? Because the catastrophe is upon us and just getting started.

So I’ve made my peace with the fact that there will be no saviors. I feel like many of us are experiencing a crisis of expectation. We keep believing that things will happen differently: it won’t be so bad, it’s only four years, that he won’t be all bad… Our false and completely inaccurate expectations – based on convention, level of privilege, and/or ignorance are leading us down a path towards our own destruction – and we’re walking it. Perhaps there’s a little apprehension in our step but because so many of us want to believe – That we’ll be alright, that they don’t really mean us any harm – we follow like the children behind the pied piper – oh how we fall in line.

If the New York Times or Washington Post aren’t  bent out of shape at the proposed cabinet members or the recent convention of white nationalists in Washington, DC praising the incoming President complete with Nazi salutes, well then, it can’t be so bad, can it? But precisely this must be our cue. The sign that something is very rotten, not in Denmark but in these divided United States.

Even as I am overwhelmed with anger, disappointment and frustration – my sons have not raised me to be humorless. On the contrary.  As I find my own way to resist the spectacle of the current developments, I will need to hold on to my capacity for humor, laughter and fun. To my sons and my students, I owe them at least that much.

Special thanks to Eric Spreng for his wonderful essay on why we need to write ourselves free from despair which helped me write this post in the midst of my confusion.