tv
Now I remember why I stopped watching TV news.
I resisted throughout most of the Katrina story but Rita caught my interest and I started following it. By Wednesday I was obsessed. Luckily we went off to the lake cabin for the weekend and I was able to detox in a TV-free environment.
It is not so much the fear and panic that turns me off. No real harm came of the over-hyping of Rita after all. It really could have turned out worse than it did. Maybe a lot of gasoline was burned in unnecessary evacuations but that’s probably the worst you could say about it.
What bothers me most about TV news is the way it seems to make everybody think the same way. You just get a little bit of information about a handful of stories. Mostly chosen to increase ratings, I suspect. Whenever I discover that I am thinking the same things or have the same opinions as everybody else it starts to make me nervous. Same thing when I hear somebody say words that I’ve just heard on TV. I start worrying that I am living through Fahrenheit 451 or that I can’t fall asleep lest I be taken over by the bodysnatchers.
September 30th, 2005 @ 7:38 am
In my opinion, most people want scripts for their lives. This is why advertising and religion work so well. Folks don’t have to think and consider. Not if they can get thoughts and behaviors and opinions fed to them. Nothing is more fascinating than “news porn.” The more lurid and compelling the details or the images, the more people are interested. More interested in the “porn” than the cause or implications, they absorb this stuff like sponges and that alone become their basis for conversation and understanding. I must stop. I’m depressing myself.