Enough Fluff News Buffs
Newsweek: Current - initial print run, Fall 2005
Hot off the press, here is some late breaking news: the news is officially broken. Our giant journalistic machine has popped like a giant wad of Big League Chew. Don’t get me wrong, I love a hearty laugh; however, I’d rather listen to John Kerry and Jennifer Lopez discuss immigration laws than read these constant updates on Britney Spears’ zygote incubation.
The American media is wound up in an identity crisis. They can’t afford to overwhelm their readers with famine, war, and plague. Instead they must somehow make newsworthy sorrows a little more palatable to the typical modern consumer with an unhealthy obsession with Internet pornography and diet coke. Soon journalists will try to soften up the war in Iraq story with a sidebar spotlighting Hugh Heffner encouraging Iraqi women to shed their inhibitions and release, “Debbie Ditches Burka: Iraq Uncovered.”
Journalists have developed bizarre solutions to this complicated dilemma; some incorporate copious amounts of fluff to counteract the sadness. For example, Sacramento Bee recently ran two promising stories: “Suspect hit with Tasers, then dies” followed by, “Messiest kid’s room comes clean.” Unless they found the Bill Hicks edited version of Basic Instinct or a dinosaur testicle shaped like Jesus, I hardly think this messy room deserves front page attention.
The New York Times recently adopted a more creative solution; they combined the serious and the fluff to create “sluff.” Their front page graphic features three American soldiers who, “ate a breakfast provided yesterday by a family in Barwana, Iraq.” Isn’t that sweet? I also like to eat breakfast! I can’t believe foreigners need sustenance too! I feel so connected to our war zone allies.
News agencies and journalists are not to blame for this sad, stagnant news. They need profit and unfortunately it’s hard to sell literacy these days. A mere fraction of our newsstands have publications with actual news in them. How can we blame the media when the public would rather spend their free time watching a monkey that smokes Marlboros and sniffs his own ass for pleasure than support the children who are dying of starvation in Niger? Screw the humanitarian garbage. Americans prefer celebrating Mickey Mouse’s birthday to social progress. I’d recommend we eat Mickey Mouse, but the price on his head exceeds the GDP of several third world countries.
Shall we continue to offset the fear of nuclear war with the long awaited copulation of two pudgy, zoo pandas? Perhaps columnists should start to invent news. This just in: Today Congress discovered that Bill Clinton secretly declared ‘Bone Sucking Sauce,’ the official presidential hot sauce then denied it. He was overheard saying, “It all depends on what your definition of sauce is and I did not have a declaring relationship with that sauce.” What next? Are we going to start claiming Bert and Ernie were refused marriage licenses? Perhaps we should convince a man to pay his parking ticket with pennies and report his epic journey.
As fun as these stories are, there’s only one way we’re going to salvage our media from the need to buffer the American public with cute stories and shiny objects. Journalists must report the positive news story. Don’t take a picture of American soldiers eating breakfast twenty feet from a frightened Iraqi mother and her confused child, only to claim that war is companionship. Actively search out the people who are making this world a better place. Write about a Buddhist monk who taught suicidal teens to love themselves through the cosmic law of cause and effect. Showing the public concrete escape routes for their apathy will resurrect journalism. Stories must be positive, genuine, intriguing. Don’t try to trick the American public. We’re lazy, not naïve. As for me, I’m off to see if Mickey can be prepared medium rare.
By Michael Giardina