The Story: a Condensed Poetics :: Joseph Robertson

A vibrant media culture, also known as a Free Press, is vital to the full and healthy functioning of a democracy. But in the zeal to push boundaries, much is being done to undermine both the value of the media and the value of language as the fundamental medium of free expression. Our media environment is flooded not only with the jargon of the experts and the specialists, but also with the jargon of the ignorant. The same media slant that makes corporate slogans into household proverbs also has the effect of deadening the expressive capacity of both individuals and the press itself.

The endless caprice of the ever-expanding "advertising market" (the term now most commonly applied to what used to be our Free Press) has replaced the concept of a press designed to first serve the public interest by providing the service of information. The advertising-market media scheme instead embraces the paradigm of a ruthlessly competitive market system in which it is assumed by all that some mystical essence within market dynamics (regardless of concentrations of power) will automatically embrace and promote the First Amendment. This mystical essence (the mythic "invisible hand") thus is thought to keep important information flowing, increase transparency at all levels and serve the public interest. Clearly, it depends on context: in a society beset by tyrants, this appears to be the case, but in an established democracy, such forces can have the opposite effect, creating incentives for distortion and hyperbole.

This caprice of the ad market (which openly pursues the supplanting of serious news programming with variety shows, vapid comedy and 24-hour soaps and infomercials) not only hampers discussion; it erodes the quality of language being used. The reason for this is simple: the lust to capitalize on what is perceived as the efficiency of the soundbite reduces the majority of all televised information to the breadth and depth of the newspaper headline. If anything follows the headline, it is usually a quote (another soundbite), and so the pervasive brevity of news delivery comes to require a sort of witty impertinence which excludes complex language or reasoning. What is left is a sort of journalistic dadaism, in which what is said is less important than that it be said in a novel or ear-catching way. This almost invites the mangling of language usage, as well as the deliberate use of misleading trains of thought (shocking or confusing enough to inspire momentary curiosity, through which to gather "sticky eyes" to one's channel).

This of course is the logic of the TV-dinner: a utility designed to serve the time-constraints of scattered minds. Obviously, the TV-dinner is a necessary evil of the industrialized, media-saturated society, its usefulness able to assist any individual or small group in a moment of need, without the least discrimination. It is, in this way, very democratic in and of itself, but it is also part of a larger phenomenon which, through thoughtless patterns of repetition, boxes out the opportunity to find deeper human meaning in the human world. One might ask, for instance, what good is an advanced economic system in which most or all of the participants never have ample time for a home-cooked meal? Is that a democracy at all? If most people are deprived of even the hint of real human enjoyment? We are not there yet, but fast food (a doubly false duologism) is still gaining ground against more time-consuming culinary arts.

It is the bad English of terms like TV-dinner that points to the problem: we consume nutrient-delivery-vehicles increasingly devoid of any human touch; we gravitate toward media sources increasingly devoid of any human touch; we embark upon a cultural transformation in which complex reasoning is as suspect as haute cuisine; truth and its expression, or even the quest for it, are folded into the current of fashion trends. People divorce themselves from thought, language and sincerity, in favor of more comfortable, less time-consuming alternatives, the way people lose themselves in theme-parks designed to stimulate feelings of indulgence and comfort without stimulating serious thought or discovery. So, our media has become a landscape of competing themeparks.

During the war in Iraq, each of the three major cable news networks adopted a posture of military celebration, adding music, graphics and military jargon to their highly filtered reporting, almost to the exclusion of any other news whatsoever. Even before the war began this was the case, arguably in the midst of an absence of news on the subject. It was as if they believed that the primary goal of all news organizations should be to convince the public of their patriotism, when in fact their profession is uniquely cited in the First Amendment as having a vital role in the democratic system, thus rendering them virtually patriotic in their essence, infallibly so, as long as they remain committed to truth-seeking.

One station even titled a daily program "Countdown: Iraq", as if they knew all along that nothing could stop the push to war, or else as if they themselves were in the business of promoting it. Some critics have argued that conflict attracts viewers, and the prospect of increased ad revenue thus leads quite naturally to an affinity for headlines and images that hint at war. That would seem to be an almost mystical assertion, in the absence of hard evidence of such plotting, and so in fairness, it is but a suggestion. What is clear is that the relentless push to commercialize any and all communications media has coincided with what appears to be the apotheosis of an enterprise which was formerly dismissed as "yellow journalism".

At other times, we've been graced with twenty-four-hour coverage of celebrity scandals, entertainment industry news and a general rumor-mill in which hard reporting seems almost totally taboo. Instead, it is the product that can be dressed up in its own color-scheme, a virtual architecture that can set for itself the terms (the limits) of a narrow debate, the themepark or the TV-dinner culture that is actively sought. There is also a danger in the very thematizing, or branding, of news stories, or issues: that is, that it becomes less permissible to report or to say things which break the mold... perspectives outside the aesthetics of the them become less attractive, even where more true or more meaningful... even where more viscerally shocking.

In this atmosphere, where the maintaining of popular themes and brands is considered conducive to prolonged visibility for a news source, or for its sponsors, there is little room left for the tough but necessary choices with which editors safeguard the authenticity of their publications. It is not advertising that causes the conflict: it is the linking of advertisement to content. That is a direct affront against the real freedom of the press. Because, it is a distorted view of who works for whom. The media work not for advertisers, but for the viewers; it is their money that advertisers deliver into the suit-pockets of big media. Advertisers are purchasing a secondary service, but the primary responsibility of the media is always to its audience.

It is in this service to the people that the press gains its freedom. Once the press turns its back on this fundamental liberty, the scope of what is delivered can only narrow. And it is in that narrowing of the lens, in that constriction of the landscape, that access to information is undermined, language is overtaken by the perceived efficiency of sound-bites, and so by the urge to corrupt the use of language as a medium for free and thoughtful expression.

What is the meaning of all this criticism? Should we censor the "advertising market"? Should the government dictate in strict terms what the "public interest" is? I think not, at least not in a way that violates the First Amendment promise of a Free Press. But in some severe instances, standards might be applied, in the interests of encouraging the press to fulfill its obligation to provide a public service. For instance: the time-honored standard of a minimum amount of news programming for broadcast networks, or, more proactively: a requirement to provide a certain amount of unbiased, free political coverage of a certain minimum number of parties (more than two) during election season. Or, consider a requirement to publicly correct erroneous reporting at least one level higher than initially reported by the responsible source.

Perhaps these are too severe; perhaps it is more democratic to urge the viewers to choose by opting out of the sound-bite market, by not watching networks that err on the side of perceived "commercial viability", or on the side of the more simplistic, more easily digestible version of an important issue. But who will advertise this campaign for a devoted press?

Is it possible that some major commercial entity will take it upon itself to adopt the long-term view that being associated with a truly free and independent press would be good public relations? It could happen. It is, one might suppose, a question of viewership. Can such a media source survive without ample commercial funding? As argued above, commercial money seeks the witty dadaism of the recipient press, the non-proactive, non-investigative, sound-bite-spiced TV-dinner-styled rumor-mill media environment.

So maybe the answer lies in language. Language is still the basic and necessary medium around which all other media are erected. Maybe it is incumbent upon each individual mind to defend its right to know, defend its right to enquire, defend its right to benefit from and even partake of a free press, by using language as well as possible, by building up a repertoire of incisive conceptual language, and by exercising these assets in the human environment, in the natural subtext (which some call "real life") to the media ecology. And from there, maybe language leads to more language, asking to knowing, effort to information.

This essay is part of the Visions section of

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