Information in the age of entertainment

Faced with the strict new gun laws about to go in effect in his state, Dudley Brown of Colorado told NPR, “We tell gun owners there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.”

Aside from encouraging violence against state legislators and being all-around ridiculous, Brown’s comments also represent the state of mass political discourse in this country.

Whoever says the most outrageous thing gets the press, and whoever can get the press can define the issue.

Want to avoid talking about tax policy? Just call anyone who disagrees with you a socialist. No one wants to be one of those.

Skeptical about health care? Get someone to start screaming about death committees and the whole thing will die like a patient with a “pre-existing” heart
condition.

There’s never been a shortage of people willing to forgo rational arguments and shout buzzwords at a camera in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame. Sometimes they break through and actually get elected to Congress (I’m looking at you Michelle Bachmann), but usually they fulfill their purpose and recede back into oblivion.

They’re entertaining, but that’s about it. And we expect our news to be entertaining.
The problem is we can no longer tell the difference between our entertainment and information.

Few things are more enjoyable than Sarah Palin screaming about Joe the Plumber or Bill Maher squeezing every last chuckle out of John Boehner’s miserable tan, but few things are less newsworthy.

Media, like any business, exists to satisfy. It’s the “If I don’t do it someone else will, and if someone else does it, I’ll lose viewers” mentality.

I call it the “least common denominator incentive” because, through iteration after iteration, we end up with a discourse that is, at its core, hedonistic.

It’s great if someone has really insightful things to say, but unless it can be made flashy or upbeat it will never see the light of primetime.

Have you ever wondered why correspondence from the front and accounts of political gridlock here at home are interspersed with stories of rescued puppies and how to make the perfect frittata? Without little breathers of lightheartedness, viewers just flip over to “Modern Family.”

As a result no one sees a disconnect between describing the horrors of a mass shooting one second and taking a commercial break so we can hear all about Papa John’s better ingredients and better pizza the next. We commodify the funerals of kindergartners and declare guilty those who have yet to see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jury, all under the guise of some duty to inform the public.

We do it all on the basis not of who has the best argument, but who can turn the best phrase or set up with the most ludicrous strawman.

In a way, we are Pavlov’s dogs grown human. We hear the chimes of NBC or the smooth tones of Diane Sawyer and we salivate for our meal of information made palatable by the pragmatics of the medium.

We are trapped in a feedback loop of screaming voices we assume belong there, but we have stopped asking ourselves why.

We can no longer tell the difference between information we need and information we only want.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu