Taken Out of Context

This week, Lenore of the New York Sun is writing a column for tomorrow, Jan. 15th, about how statements by political candidates are being taken out of context and blownup up into pretty explosion of hoopla designed to help or hurt a candidate's chances for election. Like that whole Quayle-potatoe scenario. As for my two cents, well, that's what the media does. Forget PR, we folks got NOTHIN' on the media when it comes to spin. Of course, we're expected to rotate like a 45 LP, it's what we DO, but the media, well, they're supposed to be unbiased and just REPORT. But that can make for boring news, and besides, there are so many outlets now and so few real reporters left those who aren't running our VNRs as their own news packages find themselves pressed to MAKE news. One editor with a large metropolitan daily that shall remain nameless once told me that he and his colleagues had no interest in educating the public. "We're here to stir controversy," he said. Strange, I thought their job was to tell the truth, or at least a reasonable facsimilie thereof. Personally, I think if we got rid of private programming tomorrow, went completely federal-funded, i.e. everybody but PBS off the air, this would stop immediately. But we all know THAT isn't ever going to happen, so the media will continue to take things out of context because it gets everybody riled up and gives people things to blog about, talk in bars about, waste time in the office chatting about, and, so the media hopes, continuing to read their newspaper or watch their news program or listen to their radio talk show. We've stepped back in time to the 1800s, the days of Horace Greeley and yellow journalism where newspapers (which was the media back then) had no qualms about being aligned to particular parties, candidates, and causes. There is very little NEWS any more. It's really all OPINION. And so it goes...