PoMo Blog (and my work colleague) guru Terry Heaton’s newest essay deconstructs the voyeuristic nonsense of the recent news (“news”) cycle. The nonstop, wall-to-wall Anna Nicole and Britney’s head coverage is rationalized because “that’s what the audience wants,” right? Well, in the postmodern world, writes Terry:
…this is just an excuse to validate and continue our behavior. Blaming the audience is also quite absurd, because our culture itself has no internal governor anymore. Without it, can we really say people are to blame for watching what we put in front of them?
Terry doesn’t see an end to the pandering coverage:
The assigning of blame in all of this is counter-productive. It simply is what it is. Mass marketing demands a mass audience, and we will keep doing what we’re doing.
But he does find the answer and the savior for journalism in the 2.0 online world:
… this (1.0-style voyeurism) shouldn’t stop traditional media companies from entering the Media 2.0 world and playing by its rules instead of their own. The opportunity exists to grow new brands, built on different guiding principles and unafraid of connecting with the people we’re trying to serve. The experience can be humbling, but there is much the mainstream can do to actually advance the cause of expanding the public forum in the cyber world. By encouraging and supporting the effort, it won’t matter how much its core efforts pander to voyeuristic information, because the higher calling of journalism—with argument—will be served elsewhere. We might actually behave our way into something significant.
I’ll only add that I wonder why the “news” networks bother with the news at all…