Headlines AS news destroyed the role of the media.
The role of a free and independent press/media in what was then the United States was to “keep people honest” or at least, to “keep the playing field level” through what became known as muck-raking and whistle-blowing. Research and investigations taking staff-months (if not staff-years) of effort were justified to the professional managers and owners as “part of our traditional duty”. If things were allowed to go to the point of staff-months, then it usually meant that someone had found “enough manure”, as the saying goes, to convince a sceptical managing editor that “there must be a pony down there somewhere”. Finding the evidence, and laying it out in enough detail and clarity that the general public would understand well enough to apply political pressure, can’t be accomplished in 140 characters, or even in a two-minute story on TV news. Headlines are what get people’s attention, but that only lasts a few second now — throw “too much” detail at the viewer or, “worse”, “bore” the viewer, and she’ll switch to another channel that isn’t running the same story.
Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was part of the problem; concentration of media ownership was another; headlines as a substitute for rather than a summary of information in the quick-cutting news-as-Entertainment! industry is another. Put them together and you get the perfect storm of polarisation and carefully-stoked apathy that has replaced citizen awareness. People are told to be afraid! People are told to pay attention only to what they’re told to pay attention to! People are told that these other people don’t matter; don’t try to understand them — they look different than you do, they speak different than you do, so they’re obviously “bad hombres” (to use the Commander-in-Tweet’s phrase).
Humanity has heard that before. America has heard that before. Too often, it’s led to crimes against humanity perpetrated by the very governments shouting the loudest that they “keep everybody ‘safe’”. Don’t fall for a Taster’s Choice analogue to democracy. The rule of law is not the same thing as fascist rule by law.
