Djelloul Marbrook

Sometimes I think the all news all day formula is traumatizing society. The news—if you can call that weird concoction of anchor bonhomie and drivel news—is surpassingly negative, and in the interest of ratings the media rarely lose an opportunity to exaggerate the negative side of the news. News or what passes for it is about bad behavior, disaster, crime, nasty mouths, lies, spin, malfeasance—and a little upbeat story here and there as condiment.

How much of such news as theater can we take?

Perhaps our traumatized soldiers are coming home to a society unprepared to care for them because the homeland too is traumatized by the sheer weight of importunate news. It’s true that the homeland can switch off the bombardment, but it seems also true that we are addicted to our celebrities and their fecklessness, our lying, money-grubbing politicians, our smiley air-head anchors, and all the disturbing imagery and dissembling that is called the news.

We are bombarded by reminders of our inhumanity, indifference, greed, and failure to rise to principle, and yet we ourselves struggle to be principled, to be decent, to treat each other respectfully, but the media are not interested in this daily heroism of ours, however much they may occasionally toss it a bone. We are a mass to them and individuals only when we behave badly.

It’s not unlike Iraq. Our men and women know there are places not as
terrifying and dangerous, but they are over there, for better or worse, bombarded, bombed, ambushed and sniped at. And so are we. Different kinds of trauma, to be sure, but traumatizing nonetheless.

Child experts will tell you that verbal abuse is as damaging as physical abuse, if not more so. Verbal abuse is slow poison. The child never gets it out of his system. It deforms and dements his life. Why should it not be so, then, that our steady diet of trivia, ugliness, mendacity and pettiness also gets into our systems and poisons us? If it is true in medicine, as the medical community is now saying, that attitude plays a profound role in recovery, why should it not be true that our emotional and even physical state is not affected by the news?

If this is so, then we should question how we define the news. What passes for news is the result of corporate greed. It is trivial, condescending and shallow because to do a better job would cost more money. To intelligently explain issues, to expose malfeasance, to explore complex issues is costly. It cuts into cheap, quick profit. You need smart people and time for good reportage, for real edification, and that translates into money, money shareholders and CEOs would have to forfeit for the public good, which they don’t give a damn about. So we get what we get, and I have a feeling it is traumatizing us in ways we don’t understand, just as our returning heroes don’t understand how they can look healthy and yet be so emotionally battered.

The so-called news frustrates us because, lacking in depth, intelligence, respectfulness and vision, it provides us with no ways out of our common condition. It gives us no tools to build a better society. This is its real failure, and it is not merely a failure, an omission; it is a betrayal, and like all betrayals it wears the face of helpfulness and concern and honesty.—DM