The harm it must do - the endless TV 24 hour MSM news cycle during disasters.... [View all]

[NRaleighLiberal]

As I related the other day, when the Boston Marathon bombing happened, I was doing other things and found out when my wife (who heard about it on NPR) called me. So I turned on the TV (CBS, Scott Pelley) and saw the horror - and within 10 minutes a few things were clear: the fog of disaster already took hold, there was little concrete information, there were a few videos that they looped, and the wash/rinse/repeat cycle had a very short amplitude.

So I watched for 10 minutes more, and must have seen the loop of the explosion - the one where it showed the poor older runner crumpling like so many pins on a bowling alley - dozens of times. The loop would repeat...and repeat...and repeat. So I turned the TV off.

Later that night, for the nightly national news, we turned it on again - and it was pretty much the same stuff - in fact local news never came on - it was Pelley version 15.1, showing the same loop.

And over the past few days I've pondered what constant repetition does - because you and I know that there are people all over the country that have that damn TV on 24/7, and saw the looping over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over......

and over........


..............................and over and over again. Reminded me of 911 (during which time my wife and I were visiting our daughter in Ireland, so couldn't watch Sky news endless looping and looping and looping).

So our natural tendencies to want to watch, to thirst for updates and news, get confronted with the psychological impact of seeing or hearing something endlessly repeated.

What does it do to us? Inflame? Desensitize? Awaken primal urges to find and kill? To profile - jump to conclusions - theorize?

Of course, all of this - but for the most part, it can't be good. It can't be good for objectivity, thoughtful consideration, time to absorb, time to gather real facts.

And in a nutshell, that's what I find really dangerous and awful about the damned 24 hour news cycle.

And that's the first thing that jumped into my mind this morning as I sip the morning coffee, sitting in my front room, listening to the birds, chatting with my wife. With no TV on.

Peace, everyone - have a great day.




ps....the 24 hour MSM news cycle is no less damaging when it is NOT in disaster mode. Then it can just spin whatever propaganda that the corporate owners wish to serve up....less pictures, though, to mesmerize us with.