Celebrities Come First

Juniper crafted an excellent question on her weblog.

I felt my response was worthy of mention:

This is the common problem of the media. They do not prioritize on issues that should (morally) receive the most attention. The media is an institution that survives by selling stories, whether it be in print, on television, or on the web.

It is in this case that the bloody, gory stories receive the most attention. This explains why 9/11, Iraq, Hurricanes, and (to a lesser extent) Kashechewan got so much publicity.

The next problem arises is that we have such short attention spans, that we easily grow tired of hearing the same stories over and over again. The newest news also gets priority over issues that may be (morally) more important.

It doesn't help that North Americans worship their celebrities like they were royalty.

If there were a solution to the problem, I would suggest the media be a non-profit organization, run by the federal government. But that also opens a whole new can of worms, and destroys the credibility of the media. Think of what kind of world we would live in, if the governments of the world had the power to tell the taxpayers what they wanted them to hear. It would be nationalist propaganda on a whole new level, and this already exists, to some degree.

Perhaps the solution resides within the individual to choose what he/she reads. If the layman taxpayer was more conscientious about world issues, the media would have no choice but to shift their reporting to accommodate the will of the masses, or fold in the process.

Perhaps this is a better course of action.

The internet is a plethora of information, and I consider it to be the key to free, unbiased, critical commentary. Also, thank us bloggers who have the means and the drive to voice their opinion.

The media, among other things, is designed to keep the Government honest. If the media were a Crown corporation, or assimilated into the government, we would literally have Orwell's 1984 on our hands; where we would never know what was true or not. Propaganda is prevalent in all countries today -- and some governments are so effective at "spinning" the news that they could make us believe anything, and everything they tell us.

I would like to believe that the "right" side (or the "good" side) has won all the wars in history. An intelligent person will tell you that there is no good or evil; no right or wrong. But there is morality. Scholars, philosophers, and clergy have used morality as a means to dictate -- what they felt, was right or wrong.

I'm not much of a philosopher, so I think I'd better quit writing before I get torn apart by someone who really knows what they're talking about.