Blocking Out the Noise: The Advent of Television & Social Media
"Americans don't believe anything until they see it on television." - Richard Nixon
Many, many moons ago, Richard Nixon gave that candid quote. And now, today, it seems he was absolutely right. Although I work in film, I don't watch television and I've never really been one to just sit and watch shows. But I've noticed over the years, that there are those people who are simply addicted to television and literally swear by it. I've been lulled into it before, usually by a girl I'm dating; she might have her shows or channels she watches and of course I start watching with her. But the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred greatly over the years. And, amazingly, people still just don't get that mostly everything on television is not completely accurate, including the news.
It all started on October 30, 1938 with the famous radio broadcast "War of the Worlds". Yes, I know, it was radio; but radio is media and helped transition to film and television. Directed and narrated by actor and filmmaker Orson Welles, the broadcast became famous for causing mass panic. The one-hour broadcast was presented as typical evening radio programming being interrupted by a series of news bulletins. The first few updates interrupt a program of dance music and describe a series of odd explosions observed on Mars. This is followed by a rapid series of increasingly alarming news bulletins detailing a devastating alien invasion taking place across the United States and the world, climaxing with another live report describing giant Martian war machines releasing clouds of poisonous smoke across New York City. In the days following the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program's news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.
Every since that moment, media has never been the same and much of what the American public think is real or genuine is not. It's either fabricated, watered down, or not true at all. The unfortunate part is that people swear by T.V. and many are so arrogant that they simply think it doesn't affect their opinions and mind state at all. Nevertheless, you'll notice many Americans act just like whatever stereotype their people have been portrayed as on television these days. And when people meet a person who doesn't fit the stereotype, they automatically throw up red flags in their mind's eye; because they've been trained to look at people through the lens of what's presented on television. To make things worse, social media and the access to it has reinforced the stereotypes and race baiting.
To sum it all up, we're not living in the information age, we're living in the age of ignorance. Facebook is dominated by ignorance. Television is dominated by ignorance. News is dominated by misinformation. Film is dominated by irrelevance and ignorance as well. The matrix is very real and until people turn off the idiot box and recognize that they are being manipulated by T.V. programming, they'll continue to be ignorant themselves. I long for the days of true journalism, when people had integrity. I miss the days of libraries and books, where every section was clearly marked as "fiction" and "non-fiction". Television and social media doesn't have those clear cut boundaries. There's "reality-TV", but most of it is not reality at all. There are fake documentaries now, and this was one area that we once thought we could accept as fact. Similarly, the news has been caught with it's pants down repeatedly for false stories.
How do we solve the problem? I personally think it starts at home and with education. When I was growing up, there was a limit to how much T.V. I could watch and half the time, my parents forced me to go outside and play. Ironically, the news these days has people scared to even go outside, much like the "War of the Worlds" broadcast. People need to block out the noise on occasion; just put the put the cell phone down and get off social media for awhile. When you step outside and you walk around and you see people for who they are, minus how they've been portrayed in the media, you'll notice that most folks aren't all that bad. Most people aren't trying to fight or shoot you, they just wanna go to work and handle their business. As Gil-Scott Heron once said, "the revolution will not be televised". The change, the breakthrough that we all are looking for is not in a movie theater, or on T.V., or on Facebook; it's in the mirror, out in nature, and in the real world. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, my people please wake up!
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