Bruno Huber

Newsworld

News and Sound Bites: I feel like such an idiot whenever I turn the TV on because like a smoker who automatically lights up I just click in and usually coast onto a News Channel, most likely CBC, never CNN. And then I recline and let the two dimensional world of misery, crime, war and disasters flood into my living room. I sit there with my beer going stale or my coffee going cold, mentally handcuffed and physically paralysed until someone, usually Klare, has the sense to turn the darn thing off. “You’re not even watching,” Klare would say, giving me a shifty look like I wasn’t all there. “And wipe that drool off your mouth.” She’s right, I should listen to her more often. Designer News, disneyesque and sanitised, served up like a bland stew for public consumption. Nary ever an honest opinion or a personal slant. The anchor man or woman coifed and made up like dolls and propped in front of cameras and lights to deliver the daily fare of what passes for news to a distracted and deaf-mute audience. News as background like elevator music. That’s it ! Elevator news, in thechnicolor and two second sound bites. Klare summed it all up the other night: “I’m a little tired of watching the celebrity weatherman telling us it’s gonna rain when all you have to do is look out the darn window.” The good News usually consist of a feel-good piece of backyard journalism, like the rescue of an old lady’s cat from a tree or a sand castle contest, maybe a centennial birthday or a the baby-of-the-week. Juxtaposed to the brutal hack-and-slash slaughter in the Congo or the invasion of a medieval neighbourhood by the Imperial Army or the genocide in the Gaza Strip or Darfour. it makes me feel impotent and rather depressed. I try to keep a sane distance, let’s say 10 feet from the TV screen while Klare just ignores the whole circus. “I don’t want to hear about any more massacres or bloody wars, I can’t stand it, can’t seem to do anything about it and I I hate that guy in the suit telling me how it is.” I respect her feeling but always try to point out that we need to be aware of the fuckups and misdeeds, the wars and famines, the politics of starvation, the stranglehold of financial globalisation, the aids-epidemic, the overpopulation of India and the suffering of the poor and sick. We need to be weary of the lies of the politicians and news casters. “Sweetheart, we need to be aware of what’s going on, we must not close our eyes to the reality out there,” I try to insist with a righteous degree of compassion and conviction. “Ahh, bullshit,” she dismisses my feeble argument with a decisive hand movement like pushing an invisible obstacle out of the way, “you’re just too lazy to get off the couch. Make a real difference and clean the toilet for a change.” Practicality is the mother of pragmatism. “How do you know what’s the truth and what’s a pack of lies ?” Klare yells from he kitchen. “How do you distinguish between propaganda and fiction, between reality and hyperbole ? Don’t tell me you believe everything that flimmers across the screen or do you truly think the News are more real coming in high definition streams through a 42 inch plasma screen instead of a twelve inch black and white box full of lights and wires ?” Klare has a valid point. Lately I just stick to sports and the nature channel. I know the birds are real because they nest and fly in front of the camera and I know the goals and penalties are real because I saw it in slow motion. I am aware that most Newspapers as well as TV stations get their up to date news from Reuters in New York. Then they spin it and prepare the daily menu of sound bites and shock-footage according to the message the particular station, network or paper wants to convey to its public. I’m also cognisant of the fact that if I really want to know what’s going on in a particular war or the coup d’état du jour, I need only dive into the Internet and spend 25 hours a day disseminating and speed reading the readily available terabytes of information on any given subject. It’s a case of information overload, too much truth, too many realities, too few personal connections, too little matter to hold onto. I’d make more difference helping an old lady cross the street or wiping a child’s runny nose, then watching the news any given day. Desensitised, over-informed, bombarded and inundated with up to the minute News updates we collectively sit in front of our TV’s and let the daily, customised dose of war, murder and in depth analyses wash over us. It’s a form of mindless entertainment, passing the time without due cause, staring at the screen like idiots. Unmoved and unfazed by another uncovered mass grave of Polish officers, a pile of human skeletons from Cambodia, a fly infected, hunger-belly child from Eritrea, a corpse strewn street in Sierra Leone, a bombed out neighbourhood in the Gaza strip and on and on. And suddenly I noticed that my beer is empty and I wipe the crumbs of chips from my shirt when I heave myself off the couch on the way to the fridge for another cold one. I’m glad for the weatherman, surely the most useless and redundant two minutes of mindless blather. “Sunny with a chance of showers, possibly turning to rain, between 8 and twelve degrees, blah, blah, blah.” I’m glad for the sports, the only thing worth watching. When Klare asks me if I’ve cleaned the toilet yet I yell back. “Just about to flush it dear,”

All rights belong to its author. It was published on e-Stories.org by demand of Bruno Huber.
Published on e-Stories.org on 06/06/2006.

 
 

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