Voters are angry… People are scared…

I’m driving my son and a carload of his stuff back to university, so we’re checking traffic on the ‘all news’ radio station. For those of you too young to remember the Golden Age of radio with its weepy melodramas and histrionic soap operas I recommend you listen to the ‘all news’ station. It’s damn close.

At the top of the hour, the Mr News Man announces the top story, “The municipality of Durham is reeling with despair over the fate of a two year old boy…” (The italics are mine. He spoke with an italic free voice.)

The Municipality of Durham is reeling with despair?

Really? Can a municipality have feelings? Isn’t a municipality just a large area of land? A government jurisdiction? A bunch of lines on a map and signs at the side of the road saying something like, “Welcome to Durham, Home of The Giant Walnut!”?

Can’t wait to hear what the whole province is feeling, can you? “Ontario is struggling with frustration over the bast amount of granite it has in the bedrock of the Canadian Shield…”

Oh, right! Stupid me! Mr. Radio News Man obviously meant the people of Durham are all ‘reeling with despair.’

Really? All 600,000 of them? How did they all hear about it so quickly? Maybe in that municipality they all have “Durham Twitter…”

What’s actually more amazing is that tall 600,000 of those, uh, er, Durhamianers, are reeling with despair. How do they coordinate these things? I mean, in most municipalities when 600,000 different people hear something, they have a bit of a range of reactions to any kind of news.

You can see for yourself with this little experiment–tell different people that they have won a free ride in a hot air balloon and you’ll see a range of reactions from delight to terror. Some may even reel in despair. So getting everyone to agree on how they feel about political stuff, or a new transit system or even a terrible crime like this…

Yes, I know, I’m nitpicking.

But the fate of the world hinges on small things, accumulating. (Oh, now we’re getting melodrama from me! You say, “Rick, prove the fate of the world depends on small things. And define ‘fate of the world’. And by World, do you mean this big ball of municipalities?” And I say, “Shutup, it’s my blog! And how did you get in my head?”)

Where was I?… In my head.

Oh, right, so obviously Mr. News Man meant that the people in Durham are reeling in despair. Which he obviously cannot prove, substantiate or even accurately measure. How much in despair do you have to be to be ‘reeling’ as opposed to simply ‘feeling despair.’ Or worse, ‘shattered with despair.’

But after all, you may argue, “When you hear what happened to the boy, who wouldn’t be reeling in despair?”

Despair leaves people broken, sad, paralyzed with grief, unable to take action, broken…

Is that how everyone reacted?

Could it be possible that some people, a few even, were outraged and inspired to do something about the treatment of children? Could some others Durham folks actually be feeling grateful that they never went through that as a child. Or feeling determined, determined and committed to make sure their kids never endure the fate of the child in the news story? Could some people even be appreciating life anew, and actually be inspired to call their parents and acknowledge them for the safe childhood they provided…

Yeah, I know, I’m turning this into a Frank Capra feel good moment, but you get my point. I hope you do. Cause I’m not sure what it was…

Okay, right: One point to this is obvious: the media skew everything. The Editorial page is the only page that admits it, but everything is slanted, filtered, and awash in ‘story’ and ‘emotion’.

Newspapers get the facts wrong all the time, leave out huge gaps, and yet God forbid if anyone actually ‘doctors a photograph.’

While almost every journalist I know aspires to spread the truth and do good, the big media outlets, that is to say the municipalities of the media world rather than the individuals are more and more inclined to be doing what the advertisers do. Pitching feelings.

Especially these days when the media outlets are all part of conglomerates. We all know that the mere selection of news is totally skewed. (Try getting an article on your amazing ADHD documentary that’s airing on Global from any media outlet not owned by the people who own Global!)

So everything in your newspaper is slanted, except maybe the sports scores and stock market prices. But hey, sports and the stock market already run entirely on emotion, they need some way to connect to something measurable and real.

The other point I think I’m trying to make is that it seems to me, the media interpret everything ahead of time. Even our reactions. Nothing is left for us to decide. You don’t just get the facts, you are told what it means, what you should feel about it and why you should or shouldn’t worry further.

So when you hear a news report you don’t have to stop and figure out how you feel, you are already told by the news report…you should be “reeling with despair”. After all, the whole 600,000 Township of Durham is, it wouldn’t be normal to feel otherwise.

Other possibilities? Eliminated ahead of time.

Well, you might ask, (And I will ask in case you don’t) what other reaction could there be to the tragic fate of this boy?…

How about the possibility of being outraged and taking action to prevent it happening again, or being grateful and calling someone, or feeling determined and making a difference… That never occurs to you. Those options are already off the table. Gone. So if you wonder why access to all this news and more and more information just leaves you feeling less and less powerful, and more and more passive,,,consider the fact that to the big media you are a consumer. And if the news report about the child in Durham who suffered a terrible fate actually shook you into action, and you went off and started working with the Children’s Aid Society, or Big Brothers, or whatever, even for one evening a month, then you wouldn’t be sitting at home watching TV, consuming the news and the ads that go with them and the products that the ads are trying to sell you.

Okay, I’m stopping now. I’m starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist.

I’ll write more about this next time.