So, lots of news today that I could comment on…. More calls for new gun laws after the tragic shootings in Oregon… renewed discussion around the separation of church and state because of the removal of the Ten Commandments from the Oklahoma state capitol… pretty much everything having to do with the presidential race… and one of my personal pet peeves, the reporting of all this news from various ‘news’ outlets.

What happened to the days when watching ‘the news’ meant you would actually get a report of what happened today? I mean when did we, as a society, get to the point that we need someone else to tell us what today’s happenings mean? Since when do we need someone else to tell us what we think about it, what we feel about it?  Are we really so busy that we need the news interpreted, spun and pre-felt for us and just the essence of someone else’s understanding and emotional response to the news injected into us?  Or is it something closer to just being too lazy to care enough about what is happening in our community, country and world to put forth the effort to make our own decisions and opinions?  Perhaps it is just that we don’t care enough to have feelings anymore and need someone else to incite them in us?

For their part, many so-called news organizations have increasingly become little more than ad platforms designed and polished for the specific purpose of polarizing targeted groups and generating ever more valuable revenue streams and then selling their readers and viewers to the companies willing to pay for access to those consumers.  We citizens have allowed these news outlets to increasingly take over the thinking part of taking in the news.  They have realized that inflaming attitudes over an issue or event can create return viewers and we are more than happy to surrender the responsibility and privilege of creating our own well-informed and thoughtful opinions.  We get on the internet or sit in front of our big screen televisions to take in our world and the complexities of our civilization in 10 to 15 second blurbs that are intentionally spat out to us in such a way as to make the ‘news’ fit a predetermined viewpoint.  This robs us of – or perhaps saves us from – the ‘hassle’ of actually seeing and hearing the news and then making our own determination of relevance and meaning.  Even if we hold the same opinion that our chosen news source is spinning, do we really need them to further inflame our attitudes and polarize us against any understanding of other views?  I say ‘no’!  But what THEY need is to get us more angry so that we keep coming back for more and, in that way, add value to their base.

I remember the days of “… and that’s the way it is…”, when the news was reported as ‘this is what happened today’ and not so much of the ‘here is how you will feel about this’ and definitely not the amount of effort that is exerted today to divide and polarize viewers and push them further towards the extremes.   Thankfully, not all news sources are hell-bent on inflaming their viewers into ever more extreme and inflexible positions with every report they create.  Find one or two of those sources and cling to them.  Do your own thinking.  Form your own opinions as objectively as you can.  Challenge your own opinions and view points occasionally to make sure you are looking at all arguments and still arriving at the same conclusion.  It is OK to discover that there was something you hadn’t considered in the past even if it causes you to change your position.  Above all else, make sure that your opinions are your own and not just those of someone else.

I think that is all for this post.  Thank you for making the effort to read this through and comment if you feel moved to do so.

TheCommonQuill