Slammin’ to the Oldies

Every day I wake up. This is not surprising.

So, I wake up, I get out of bed. I drag a comb across my head. Then I turn on my television. I’m not really sure why I do this.

I mean, I already know what I’m going to see in general terms. Why do I need to see the specifics before I even get to my car where I will, most likely, turn on the radio and listen to all the same news I saw on the television? I don’t know the answer to this question—even though I DO know that I DO need to know all this information. And why do I need to know this economic class porn? It’s simple; I need to know all about the rift between Lindsey Lohan and Hillary Duff because I’m worried about other people knowing this information and leaving me in the knowledge dust. There is nothing more frightening than being out of the loop conversationally. I guess this is why I watch the news in the morning. But it DEFINITELY doesn’t make it right.

Now, this attitude towards news isn’t exactly ground-breaking (or interesting) information, but it is relevant. There are two problems with the way news is relayed in a 24-hour cycle. The first is endemic, the other surreal. The first problem with a 24-hour news cycle is that it marginalizes important information. I mean, what constitutes news? Was the attack on the World Trade Center, in September of 2001, news? Well, of course it was. It was on Fox News. But what about Paris Hilton going to jail? Well, shit, that was on Fox News as well. So then, what constitutes news? From my—admittedly spotty—memory, these two occurrences ate up about the same amount of airtime, and who’s to say which story is more important to Americans? How do we know? Is it ratings? Because I’d bet Paris did better there. Is the only important news the sort that affects the greatest number of Americans? Because that was definitely 9/11. Now, obviously (probably), September 11^th was much more important, but that’s not really the point. The point is that the newscycle blurs the line between important information (like when the Fed lowers rates to improve a housing crisis threatening to plunge our economy into recession which would cause a loss of jobs and in conjunction a crazy drop in the marginal utility of Americans throughout this land) because it has to. Television is a results driven organization, in general, and in that idiom results means ratings. And real news does not drive ratings. It’s the same reason that newspapers are folding all over the place while rags like the New York Post continue to grow. News is not fun. News is depressing, and depressing does not sell. Paris Hilton is the new America; she is the literal amalgamation of the twenty-four hour newscycle and there is nothing anyone can do about this now. The problem isn’t that important things become less important, even though they do. The problem is that, in order to fill up one hell of a lot of programming, un-important things have to become life or death propositions on the air. It is the nature of the newscycle beast. Some things are important and are still important, but their relative importance is marginalized every time Nicole Richie’s weight, Kiefer Sutherland’s drinking habits or Tom Sizemore’s drug addiction is discussed on purported news stations (or even on Larry King).

There is an obvious disconnect here, namely I am decrying a system—in this case, the 24 hour newscycle—by talking about it, which is exactly how these stories get their legs in the first place. When I turn on the television in the morning, it’s not as if the talking heads of Matt Lauer or Meredith Vieira are cheerily espousing that inebriated driving is a good thing as long as it’s done by a movie star.

The problem isn’t what they feel about what they’re saying, it’s that they are saying it at all. They are creating the iconography of the story. It justifies MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and all the rest because now they can say, “Breaking News: Paris Hilton has sex as reported by NBC this morning,” and this is the danger to our culture in this new age. Our Godzilla is no longer a big green monster rampaging over cities, nor is it “real news” like terrorism. Our Godzilla in the new age is Paris Hilton becoming a star because she’s rich, it’s a society of young people realizing they have the power to create news using the internets. It’s the constant pull of having any and all information at our fingertips whenever we may need or want it and, in conjunction, program directors doing their best to sate our appetites. In this new world we’ve created the twenty-four hour news cycle; we’ve let Godzilla out of Pandora’s Box, and now we can only hope to minimize the destruction.