The Power of Speech

Burying the Lead

Burying the Lead

Sometimes I wonder about the type of news stories that get the most coverage. And  the real reasons that some news story which could be of monumental importance to the human race are relegated to a small blurb in the back pages of the paper.

The “buried lead” seems to be the mind-set of most news organizations. They don’t appear to have a “Big Picture” philosophy when framing the news. I wonder what the discussions are like around the table when they’re trying to decide to “break” a story? Do they not trust the public to be able to, as Jack Nicholson famously said, “to ‘handle’ the truth?!

Are the American People “dumbing down” to the point where we are basically a low-information electorate? And is this a polite euphemism for a lazy and uninformed electorate? Whose fault is it that we are “uninformed”?

The circulation of most major newspapers has been on the decline for many years. And the major news programs have also seen a similar fall-off in viewership. Many people “catch as catch can” and use various sources of information to snatch news snippets and sound bites as they go about their busy daily routine. So it is that we have delegated the task of judging what news has the most relevance to news agencies run by corporate entities. These are the same type of corporate big-wigs that the average American purports to despise and mistrust.  So it’s no wonder that Americans mistrust the news.

We hear a lot of talk about the “liberal media”. Another familiar phrase is “media bias”.  But in the long run, the news is about as fair and accurate as we want it to be.  We, the American people, the electorate, must be able to distinguish and make informed decisions based on the best possible information we can discern.  That means looking at a variety of media sources found in print and television. And if possible, we also have the internet as a new source of information.  It is up to the American public to change the flow of information from sound-bites and tag lines and to seek out the underlying importance of news stories and their sources.

For instance, if we see a story recently about the rise of the Mafia in Italy as they take over the control of garbage collection on the streets of Naples, the American public should be able to sit up and take notice. How does this affect our society as a whole? Or does it?  When we see that human rights abuse is still taking place in Myanmar, or Burma, and Darfur, the Sudan, is still in need of aid, we need to take note.

How does the Chinese economic stranglehold on our weak American dollar affect our way of life in the long term?  What are the implications of long-term global warming and what are some of the most effective solutions? Why did we become embroiled in the Middle East in the first place? If we know the history of our long-term problems and dependency on foreign oil, might that help us find a way out? Who is best suited to understand our national problems and the “mission statement” of the U.S. as a beacon of freedom and a leader of the free world? Are we still a major super-power and if not, what happened? 

The American electorate is basically uninformed and by tacit consent, the media has been “burying the lead” for many years. It is still up to the people to demand change. If we are able to make informed decisions, we will begin to understand where we are as a nation, and where we are going in the future.