Columns

First point of the year, and hopefully a fairly obvious one: media can be pretty dangerous when abused. Read Orwell’s 1984? That’s the worst of it. Will copious helpings of Project Runway, Desperate Housewives, and According to Jim get us there? I hope not, but maybe we do need to think about what we’re watching a little bit. Does Brad want Jen back? (I hear those two might get bi-zay ‘according to a close friend’.) Probably not, but why, at the pit of our brains, do we care in the least? And more importantly what do we forget about because of these stories? (Think of 3 News’ relentless coverage of America’s Next Top Model, for instance – transparent shilling for a show broadcast on their network, sure, but what actual news was cast aside to make room for it?)

Hmm – that sounds boring, you say? First of all ... ouch. Second: I’m not exactly a professor sipping conservatively from a brandy glass, wearing a tweed jacket and surreptitiously hitting on undergraduates. I promise I’m not going to include pages of tables analysing media saturation, I won’t quote Oliver Boyd Barrett, and I won’t bash Rupert Murdoch every chance I get just because I don’t have anything to talk about, although I would consider hurling an urchin or echidna if I saw his demagogic mouthpiece Bill O’Reilly in the street (If you haven’t seen him losing it during the lead-up to Inside Edition yet, please refer to YouTube).
These are things that I’ll leave for academia, because in reality I’m just sick of sitting in front of the television wondering why the hell I have to choose between three channels on a Monday night – all of which are broadcasting poorly-written crime-drama programmes with squinting, sunglass-wearing, Bono-style jackasses tracking down murderous rich-kids, goths, or other un-tapped sub-cultures (*exhale*).
So, over the coming months, I’m basically going to pay out all the wonderful things that television and the news brings us: Extreme Makeover Home Edition’s trend of exploiting sick people for ratings; the ‘War on Drugs’ in the 21st Century; and the way in which international and local new systems report everything from Destiny’s Church and atheists to Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. So, if you’re ever concerned about what we don’t get told; if you love laughing at vacuous pundits when they swear on television; and if you ever wonder why we always have a ‘squirrel waterskiing story’ at the end of the news, keep reading.