Itt-Ott, 2000 (33. évfolyam, 1/133-2/134. szám)
2000 / 2. (134.) szám
On the threshold of the 21st century the "future shock" (Alvin Toffler) of technological transformation has produced a disjointed world around us. One of its most disturbing causes and consequences is the linkage between the consumer's appetite and the distortions that the media provide through tricksterism on screen and in print. The traditional role of communication has thus been perverted to serving primarily escapism and/or the objective of the lowest common denominator in entertainment. As a consequence we have been shortchanged in understanding the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the communication that defines the values of our age and the concerns of political existence, both of which are central to defining our future. The confusion and the breakdown in communication is in large part a consequence of two parallel developments: one is that the media now focus on selling everything from toothpaste to sexual encounters of the third kind, while the second is that this commercialization of the media's role leads it to focus on the mass consumer rather than elite tastes. Most programs therefor focus on that which is strictly entertainment oriented, the soaps, athletic events, talk shows, and blood and guts or blood and sex focused adventure films. The victim of this focus is the public that wants and needs to be informed. It is ironic that the potentially most informed society in the world - the society that provides the citizenry for the sole remaining global superpower - has become the least informed. The average American is just plain ignorant of anything that relates to American foreign policy and most everything that relates to domestic public policy. True there are innumerable "special publics" competing for attention for inclusion in the public agenda, but these approach policy from a narrow perspective with little interest or real understanding of a general or national agenda. Only a relatively narrow cluster at the top can be considered to be part of the "attentive public" that keeps up with all the significant news. The media is therefor between two constraining factors in reporting and in providing coverage for important developments. The advertising pressure on the one hand, the limited time available to deliver the message, and the briefer attention span of the contemporary viewer or reader. Add to this the problem of family socialization, or lack thereof, which has left the present-day TV viewer or newspaper and/or periodical reader, with a very limited range of options, with a "selective perception" capability that automatically switches away from serious news and "educational" information and content to the fluff of sports, sex, and violence. Knowing that news does not sell shampoo or fast cars, the media people have turned more and more to "action news," to visual, graphic and dramatic portrayals that attempt to compete with the entertainment programing that has been foisted on the world by commercialization. A consequence of this has been the limiting of news items in terms of both number and content. Capsulization of news items - with all its distortions - has been standard practice since the advent of television (1950's). The focus on "sound bytes" has become the standard for summary reports on interviews. This means that the public only gets bits and snippets, a kind of symbolic summary of what has actually happened or of what was actually said. The distortion is carried one step further by simply leaving out news items that are "too burdensome" for the comprehension of the "American viewing public." It is not uncommon for editorial meetings of newspapers and newsbroadcasters to simply screen out information which is considered either too exotic or unfamiliar for the American public. This screening is also largely due to the accepted axiom that the average viewer's "span of attention" is not able to absorb information on more than five or six items at one sitting. Furthermore, because of the assumed disinterest or ignorance of the American public about foreign news, the information must be packaged so that no two international events are presented back-to-back. In other words, if five or six news items are covered in one broadcast, the editors will make sure that domestic and foreign items are alternated to keep the viewer from flipping channels. What is the consequence of this kind of communication? Except for the "attentive public," (constituting 3-10% of the population) the most highly motivated sector of society, for almost everyone else it means that the media perpetuate a fragmented, disjointed, even distorted and incomprehensible "outside" world or an excessively "dummed down" version of the world. This in turn leads to frustration and an apolitical or nonpolitical posture regarding almost everything that is global or international. For young Hungarian-Americans this media pro-10 ITT-OTT 33. évf. (2000), 2. (134.) TÉLI SZÁM
