Congeries of cross connected concepts
Via Instapundit is this comment —
The way the Japanese could tell they were losing WWII was that the great victories reported by their media were getting closer and closer to home. Our media problem is like a fun-house mirror version of this - the way we can tell we are winning is that our crushing defeats are happening less often and to different enemies.
I think it’s simpler than that. Don’t look at the content, just the volume. Old Media is just implementing the “no news is good news” cliche and anything you used to read about but don’t anymore almost always means the situation has improved for the USA.
It also reminded me of listening to some BBC broadcaster go on about increased violence in Iraq or Afghanistan (I wasn’t paying enough attention to notice). But I wondered, how is it that all the reports are always of increases? I can’t recall any “violence decreases” stories, which is a more specific case of the above rule. If you hear reports, violence is increasing. If violence decreases, there will be no reports.
| cjm Saturday, 10 May 2008 at 09:26 |  |
aog, break it down for us (me) :) how do you see the media in system terms, as an abstracton? to me it seems very broken, and the loss of revenue and audience sees to bear me out.
| Annoying Old Guy Saturday, 10 May 2008 at 13:19 | |
cjm;
I should have written of this long ago, because even back when I was in university I could see the broad outlines of it, from hanging out with my Intrepid Girl Reporter friend. She worked for the student paper, and I still remember how just random facts she picked up from being around me made her the computer expert for the paper. Or how when the university decided that students would need a “C” average to work on the paper, otherwise they should spend more time with their studies, there was a revolt that lead to the editorial board resigning en masse at the effrontery of this requirement. I could partially understand, as such a requirement would have gutted the staff.
The point is that I don’t see that there’s much of a conspiracy in Old Media, or even much individual agitation. I think it’s far more than journalism is populated by putatively educated people who are not, in general, even capable of the level of abstract thought required to be agitators. It’s why so much of what Old Media does is so hollow — they have slogans and impulses, not plans.
The breakdown is therefore that Old Media corresponds to the “loser” division in business, the place where the unusable and incompetent who for whatever reason can’t be fired are sent to keep them out of the way of the people doing useful work. I think they’re trapped in a culture that’s gone too far off course to correct and the few journalists with some clue are not enough to turn things around. It’s just so much easier to spout slogans and not worry about facts.
You could call it a variant of bigotry. What’s the problem with a bigot? He’s got a frame for understanding others with some particular property (black skin, Texas accent, Middle Eastern name) that is rigid and does not correspond well to reality. The population of Old Media have this same problem, the only difference being that their frame is about events instead of people. They’re destroying their culture by bitterly clinging to their frames, even as things fall down around them. I am reminded of the last days of Easter Island.
| cjm Saturday, 10 May 2008 at 19:01 | |
in a word, “packers”. i wonder if mechanical computing has rendered the packers doomed, modern day neanderthals? they certainly act liked paniced beasts that sense the end is near.
