2003-01-23 - 10:49 p.m.
We've been calling it "The Tap Dance at Ten." That is: the local news. The name came from the verbage of a tongue-tangled novice reporter, standing out in the freezing cold, talking into a microphone at the site of some trumped up ''breaking news" story. I think she meant to say "the details at ten...."
I'm not a huge tv fan, but I watch a few programs, usually the ones that run from nine to ten, which then drags me into the news if I'm not careful. One doesn't always hit the off button the minute the credits start to roll. And besides, I've been watching all the commercials, and even I, professional skeptic that I am, sometimes get hooked. But why do we need to have commercials for the news? Why do we need some tv station executive to look through every day's news and pick out what might be the most lurid or frightening story to lure us in? They have all found out that fear is a lucritive business if you use it right.
Every time a sensational crime is committed, the news media broadcasts the same story night after night with the same pictures, even if the "update" is that there are "no new developments."
Recently it has been the case of a minister and his wife accused of killing their adopted child. Horrible. Every night the news actors go over the whole sordid tale again while flashing between the grim mug shots of the couple and the posed photo of the little boy. In another case, where an unidentified child's body was found decapitated, the tv news has continued to take every opportunity over a period of months to display the awful clay model that some police artist made of the child's head, with it's strange little teeth and glassy eyes.
Terrible, horrible things happen, and yes, of course they make the news. The world is not all sunshine and lollipops. But I resent having all this terrible sick stuff thrown in my face until I am so tired of it I have to shut my eyes and turn away. Because I don't like what that says about me, (and I'm sure I'm not alone): it says I am jaded, that I am so used to hearing about disasters and accidents and murdered children that I say, "Not this again." I don't want to be the kind of person who can hear about a dead child and not react with horror, but somehow when you know that all of this "information" is being presented in a way designed for maximum drama to milk your emotions.... pretty soon you stop reacting at all. Human suffering becomes cheap entertainment.
And from a completely different angle, I object to the focus on these cases based on their sensational nature, because our system doesn't really, at its core, seem to think child abuse is a bad crime. Notice that nobody ever gets the death penalty for killing a child? (The one murder scenario that can NEVER be justified, in my opinion.) A big burly man will just get a few years in jail for beating a three-year-old to death (a felony child abuse charge) but let him stab another inmate over a drug deal and he's toast.
So it would be one thing if the news coverage reflected the attitudes and values of society but it doesn't. Our laws and institutions don't protect children, but the media knows that nothing horrifies us more than a child killer, so we have to look at them and hear the gruesome details, night after night.
And then.... there are the legions of "this could be you" stories. Because they don't want you to feel for one moment that this is not all about YOU.... your life.... your FEAR. The viewer must never be allowed to think this awful stuff is something that happens to other people. Every story becomes a cautionary tale: Car jacking at Quick Trip...Is your car a target? Traffic accident.....Do you live near an unsafe intersection? Child bitten by dog.... Is your dog an insurance liability? House on fire....Are there batteries in your smoke alarm?
And those lovely interviews with the next door neighbor at the latest crime scene, (i.e. peripheral people who don't know anything but are willing to make fools of themselves in order to be on tv) designed to make you wonder who lives in your neighborhood.
"He was a real nice guy. Real quiet, but he always waved. We never thought somethin' like this would happen on our block." (You could say that about almost any block. We don't have a Murderer's Row here, or Slasher Heights.... where all the folks planning heinous crimes could go and live so it would be EXPECTED.)
Then comes the weather, the threat of snow, or cold, or wind or rain or heat.... too much or too little, too high or too low. In other words, the threat of anything except a balmy day in May. There is a whole collection of threatening terms for weather: STORM ALERT/WATCH/WARNING. Anything that can make the weather seem alarming and news worthy. And if that doesn't do it, the weather department cooks up all their little weather-related scare stories: Do you have frostbite? Does your dog? Can you drive on ice? Are your snow tires worn out? Will the cold weather drive the gas prices up?
In the nightly health scare segment we are informed by "in-depth" three minute stories that the medicines we take may kill us, the foods we eat cause cancer, the foods we avoid prevent cancer, doctors make freak errors.....a thousand and one little facts about health and medicine designed to keep the panicky viewer up at night.
And finally, there is the dolorous consumer watch segment where they tell you what products and services are bad for you, your children, your house, your car or the environment. You should be on the lookout for plumbers that overcharge, banks that trick you into overdrawing, car dealers that will sell you a repaired wreck. Our local station advertised all day Sunday that they would run a scathing expose' on lip balm. And did you know that volumizing shampoos really don't resist the effects of "hat hair?" And that a certain teddy bear is being taken off the market because it can choke a child when he or she rips it to shreds and tries to eat the pieces? (What are the parents doing while the child is trying to eat a teddy bear? Just curious....)
Sometimes I think they have the population hypnotized into believing something tragic will happen if they don't tune in every night and learn about all the new dangers, all the new things to be worried and afraid about.....
I am tired of being afraid. I am just so damned tired of feeling that no matter what I do, there is something I should have done differently, that I didn't consider everything, that every decision may not be perfect, everything I do is potentially dangerous. We tend to think that "information" is good, but nobody can possibly assimilate even a fraction of what we are told. But the effect..... the effect of hearing all this stuff stays with us, and eats away at our confidence and good feeling about the world.
Obviously, the first thing to do is turn it off. I am making more of an effort to do that, but it is hard to avoid because we don't live with our heads totally in the sand. I feel some obligation to know what is going on in the world.... although I usually get more out of reading it anyway.
And the other line of defense is just to fill your head with things that are beautiful, intriguing,inspiring.... it requires more work.... as if everything were not already so much effort.... but it is worth it. The teacher of a poetry class I took asked the students if we had any poems memorized. Most of us had not. Then she asked: So who knows the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song? How about the Brady Bunch? The Beverly Hillbillies? There sat a room full of people who loved poetry, but had filled their heads with the silly jingles of TV shows. So I'd like to boot out some of the junk... now that my brain is getting pretty full.... and make room for the good stuff.
You can tell I didn't get much sleep last night....
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