Every morning that I drive to work I vary the route that I
travel. Only one thing remains the same,
and perhaps that is the thing that needs to change. You see, I ingest a small dose of poison each
day on the way to work. I don’t take in
enough to kill me, but these micro doses most of the times make me feel badly
by the time I reach the front door of work.
I’m not asking for help. I am
asking for change. I am not alone in my dosage. It starts just out of curiosity, or the need
to know a little more than what I feel I am bringing into the game on any
particular morning. Sometimes I linger
too long and then the malaise fights me most of the day. Other times, friends who also got the daily
dose of poison, are cranked up when I get to the office and want to “process”
their knowledge as if anything we have an opinion on really matters.
What is this poison, you ask. I will tell you: the presentation of the local news on the
radio. Sometimes I wonder if these guys
have a set template by which they plan the stories of the day to decimate us
psychologically. It would go something
like this: Day 1 report on shooting; Day
2 re-cap the shooting unless there has been another one to take its place; Day
3 try to flush out any “human interest” stories connected with the shooter or
shoot-ee. (If it was my family that was
suffering I’d tell them where they could stash their news microphones and
cameras. Maybe the idea’s time has come: Leave the grieving families in peace to try
to find comfort among their friends and family members.) As little as I know, even I am aware that we
have had 26 homicides since January 1st. The fear of inciting “copy-cat crimes” seems
to have dissipated in the interest of selling news at the expense of someone
else’s grief.
I must confess that I became a news update junkee when the
punk in the Poconos was leading the Law on a wild goose chase one summer. Mostly I was concerned because I travel
through that area annually and it was appalling that it took so long to catch
him. The weird thing is that for as many
days as they ran that story – with all the details of how he ate, and how he
hid, and how he wore adult diapers to not leave signs of life behind, etc. –
once they finally CAUGHT him, it was as if someone pulled the electrical cord
out of the wall and the stories disappeared.
They disappeared, I imagine, because once he got his orange jump suit
things became very legal and very boring.
Boring doesn’t sell news.
I am wondering if telling these stories is more for the
purpose of intimidating the culture of healthy people than it is for inviting a
solution. We are already nervous, trust
me. We wonder when it will end. We fear in the smallest corner of our heart,
that it might not. Just when we feel we
have heard enough of Whose Lives Matter Today – I’m sorry, I thought EVERYONE’S
LIFE MATTERS – they throw a news lead out:
“Officer shot in patrol car… details on the ten’s.” Then you find out that it was NOT down the
street, it occurred half way across the country. Listeners feel badly for the family, nonetheless,
but this relentless bombarding with the same type-cast story, is draining the
emotional core of the nation.
Out of one mouth, we hear that another devastating (fill in
the type of catastrophe here: earthquake, tornado, tsunami, raging fire, etc.)
has struck a far off nation. Our good American
people who do charitable work are behind the scenes organizing the relief
efforts. They don’t make it much to the
front-and-center of the news. Why not? Why is the press denying us this feeling of,
“Oh, thank God, someone is able to do something
about this!” Nope. The media just dishes out yet another serving
of America- bashing. They flip the story
to another country that is burning our flag.
AND YET
Which
country is it that sends more money than any other to aid people in need?
Which
country is it that sends more people
to assist in danger spots of the world?
Which
country is it that people WANT to immigrate to, legally or otherwise?
I’m just saying, is all I’m saying. At the end of the day, the people in THIS
country have been pretty faithful in helping the world at large for quite a few
decades.
I’d like to see a flush-out of all the sensational
journalist types, and a replacing of them with people of integrity who can tell
a story of joy or sorrow and help you find the humanity in it. I’d like to see ALL
news outlets be able to proclaim they are “fair and balanced.” I don’t even think the one that uses that
slogan is able to say that honestly. I
would so like to say “farewell” to the news that is overtly dramatic for the
purpose of selling more news. I want the
weather to be a real prediction, not a veiled spell cast by someone who shakes
the snow globe and declares that this could be the coldest, snowiest winter ever.
Right. It could be. But you could also be wrong.
The media has a tremendous opportunity to be a tool for
culturing the morale of a society. The
radio, television and print venues reach a broad variety of people – people who
arguably could use a little good news.
How empowering it would be to listen to something in the morning that
could set the course for a positive, creative, and healing day! I don’t even feel the religious stations are
able to offer that at this point – and I listen to them. People know instinctively if you are a cheesy
salesman for your particular brand of religion, or if you are the Real
Deal. And no one really enjoys hearing
the list of who is on dock for going to hell – it is my suspicion that if you
are on that train it’s because you want to be there or decided to do nothing to
change your situation.
What I think we need at this critical juncture of life –
well, at least MY life, is some healing words and positive encouragement. I would even be okay with a little Garrison
Keillor story every now and then to keep things light. But the irresponsible journalists need to be
sent packing. I will donate the
suitcases and type their resumes for them if it will bring some peace and
harmony to our airways and newspapers.
As a friend of mine used to say to irritating people: “Don’t go away mad; just go away.”
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