'That's horrifying' Hillary Clinton said in the third and final debate against Donald Trump, which, like the other debates and the popular vote, she handily won. I remarked at the time that was the line of the debate and the line of the interminable 2016 presidential election which provided an endless loop of
grotesquerie. With the election of Donald Trump, that loop has now been extended for another four years, and
I am disturbed, distraught, and yet remain perversely fascinated.
Plato described the simultaneous revulsion and fascination with death and destruction as 'the lovely spectacle'. In contemporary parlance, it's the proverbial car crash we can't help but crane our necks to glimpse. Historical examples abound including the popularity of blood sports and public executions. George Carlin skewered the tendency in his bit about a theoretical reality show broadcasting particularly sadistic forms of capital punishment,"Good, clean, wholesome family entertainment. The kids'll love it! The kids'll love it!"
The corporate mainstream media which I define as network television news and 24-hour cable news trafficks in this compulsion to not turn away from the ugly and terrifying which seems hard-wired and immutable in human nature. For these large media conglomerates, chaos means eyeballs means advertisers means profits. Chaos, therefore, is in their financial interest. Cooperation, unity, peace, and substantive policy debate just don't make good television by comparison.
The 'media' did not single-handedly cause Trump's victory, but he is undoubtedly their creation. With The Apprentice, NBC fashioned a tycoon who represented the paragon of entrepreneurial know-how out of a sleazy socialite and business failure. The news networks later fashioned a statesman and political leader in a democratic contest out of a belligerent racist, pseudo-populist, and clown fascist. And they made lots of money doing it. Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS said last February about Trump:
Blaming 'the media' may seem a fruitless abstraction during a time where activism and advocacy require on-the-ground practical organizing not armchair dissertations. Nevertheless, the same set of incentives that produced Trump remain and are infinitely more problematic now that Trump will be taking power, and they must be dealt with. Trump's capacity to wreak havoc will produce the same influx of disaster, eyeballs, and cash that make corporate media CEOs like Les Moonves salivate - just on a significantly more catastrophic scale.
The misaligned incentives of the media are also so much bigger than Trump. They implicate our capacity as citizens to respond effectively to terrorism, global warming, and war regardless of who is in the White House.
I wonder when or if we will develop the maturity as a society to turn off the snuff film in which we watch our very own body politic - indeed our planet - get defiled? How do we reform our political system when we are addicted to the image of our own destruction?
Supporting non-profit media as a public good is important. If public media were to supplant corporate media it would probably solve much of the problem. While predominantly an issue of collective action, media reform requires some deep introspection too.
Why, when something bad happens, do so many of us instinctively turn to CNN and the likes of Wolf Blitzer? Why do we find it normal that cable news networks are on in airports? What is the cost-benefit analysis when talented, insightful commentators like Chris Hayes and Van Jones lend credibility to these corrupt institutions?
I fear that until the day we can truly fight together collectively for non-profit media that is not incentivized by profits derived from advertiser cash, the media will not only fail to stop but actively encourage those natural and man-made disasters which generate arresting imagery. Until we can 'turn your head away from the screen/it will tell you nothing' (as Jeff Buckley put it) or simply to 'shut your eyes, Marion!' (as Indiana Jones put it in Raiders to the Lost Ark) , I fear humankind will continue to be titillated by the image of (and thus made complicit in) its own destruction.
Plato described the simultaneous revulsion and fascination with death and destruction as 'the lovely spectacle'. In contemporary parlance, it's the proverbial car crash we can't help but crane our necks to glimpse. Historical examples abound including the popularity of blood sports and public executions. George Carlin skewered the tendency in his bit about a theoretical reality show broadcasting particularly sadistic forms of capital punishment,"Good, clean, wholesome family entertainment. The kids'll love it! The kids'll love it!"
The corporate mainstream media which I define as network television news and 24-hour cable news trafficks in this compulsion to not turn away from the ugly and terrifying which seems hard-wired and immutable in human nature. For these large media conglomerates, chaos means eyeballs means advertisers means profits. Chaos, therefore, is in their financial interest. Cooperation, unity, peace, and substantive policy debate just don't make good television by comparison.
The 'media' did not single-handedly cause Trump's victory, but he is undoubtedly their creation. With The Apprentice, NBC fashioned a tycoon who represented the paragon of entrepreneurial know-how out of a sleazy socialite and business failure. The news networks later fashioned a statesman and political leader in a democratic contest out of a belligerent racist, pseudo-populist, and clown fascist. And they made lots of money doing it. Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS said last February about Trump:
"'[he] may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS'...Moonves called the campaign for president a "circus" full of "bomb throwing," and he hopes it continues. "Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun.
Blaming 'the media' may seem a fruitless abstraction during a time where activism and advocacy require on-the-ground practical organizing not armchair dissertations. Nevertheless, the same set of incentives that produced Trump remain and are infinitely more problematic now that Trump will be taking power, and they must be dealt with. Trump's capacity to wreak havoc will produce the same influx of disaster, eyeballs, and cash that make corporate media CEOs like Les Moonves salivate - just on a significantly more catastrophic scale.
The misaligned incentives of the media are also so much bigger than Trump. They implicate our capacity as citizens to respond effectively to terrorism, global warming, and war regardless of who is in the White House.
I wonder when or if we will develop the maturity as a society to turn off the snuff film in which we watch our very own body politic - indeed our planet - get defiled? How do we reform our political system when we are addicted to the image of our own destruction?
Supporting non-profit media as a public good is important. If public media were to supplant corporate media it would probably solve much of the problem. While predominantly an issue of collective action, media reform requires some deep introspection too.
Why, when something bad happens, do so many of us instinctively turn to CNN and the likes of Wolf Blitzer? Why do we find it normal that cable news networks are on in airports? What is the cost-benefit analysis when talented, insightful commentators like Chris Hayes and Van Jones lend credibility to these corrupt institutions?
I fear that until the day we can truly fight together collectively for non-profit media that is not incentivized by profits derived from advertiser cash, the media will not only fail to stop but actively encourage those natural and man-made disasters which generate arresting imagery. Until we can 'turn your head away from the screen/it will tell you nothing' (as Jeff Buckley put it) or simply to 'shut your eyes, Marion!' (as Indiana Jones put it in Raiders to the Lost Ark) , I fear humankind will continue to be titillated by the image of (and thus made complicit in) its own destruction.
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