News in a blender
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
The positioning of the trivial with the tragic distorts both, takes what is important and what is fluff, puts them into a blender and mixes them up. Makes it impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Newsweek is a perfect example. On the cover of the Jan. 4 issue there is a photo of two young girls crying, and this headline: "A Pattern of Rape - War Crimes in Bosnia." Open the magazine, though, and what do you see? A two-page spread for asprin-free Bayer Select. People in pain, now pain-free because of Bayer. A page later there is the table of contents, which is itself a mishmash of serious and frivolous:
"Crimes of War: A Pattern of Rape in Bosnia. Now, on top of documented cases of systematic torture and murder in Bosnia, come charges of a new Serb atrocity - the rape of as many as 50,000 women, mostly Muslim. Wrenching testimonies from refugees tell of repeated rapes of girls as young as 6, schools and hotels turned into bordellos, gang rapes so brutal their victims die and elaborate programs to impregnate Muslim women with unwanted Serb babies. International: Page 32."
Followed by:
"`Star Trek' Enters New Orbit - Prepare to beam aboard! `Deep Space Nine,' a new `Star Trek' spin-off that premieres next week, boldly goes where no `Star Trek' show or movie has gone before. Part p.c. Western, part galactic `L.A. Law,' the series signals the beginning of a new television space race. Society: Page 40."
These are positioned as if they are of equal merit, as if they have the same import.
It isn't just Newsweek that does this. It's radio news and television news and newspapers, too, though less egregiously. "A woman was tragically burned in a fire that destroyed a three-family house and left 14 homeless," intones a radio announcer, in a cheeky, game-show host voice. Then, in the next breath, without a pause, it's time for the weather or astrological signs or an update on traffic. All at staccato pace. All given the same number of seconds. All in the same hurried tone.
It's no wonder we feel both defeated by the news and immune to it. It isn't real. It is dulled by trivia.
Just a New Year's Day complaint.
A full-page photograph of an old South African woman, stoned by a group of young men, sprawled among rock and sand, bleeding from the head and face, is positioned next to a full-page "8 compact discs for the price of 1" ad. Banter floods the airwaves. Smiles flicker on lips that report atrocities. Or smiles appear, seconds later, as if what was reported should be that quickly forgotten.
No time to digest, let alone feel. What is the purpose of news, anyway? Just to know? Just to be able to keep up with what's going on?
Shouldn't the words move us to action? Shouldn't they do more than make us shake our heads, and then forget? Shouldn't those from whom we learn about the world around us convey with their reports some sense of what matters, and what doesn't?
Right now, it's all background noise, all indistinguishable. The Tower of Babel 1993. "And today in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Washington, Chicago, New York ... nine killed, 20 injured ... now playing at your local theater, the Madonna film ... and on Arsenio Hall ...
