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The Freedom Forum �Media Studies Journal: Winter, 1996 � Media and Congress�

Started November 11 � Finished November 12, 2002; 180 pages. Posted 18 November 2002

I just love the synchronicity that�s been occurring with these books and reality lately. The day that I finished this was the same day I went to see Michael Moore�s Bowling for Columbine. (Which I went to see with my incredibly brilliant and sexy professor, by the way.)

While I liked the film, I couldn�t help but notice that it lacks a concrete point � okay, America is more violent than other countries, but what do we do about it? I don�t know, and neither did Michael. And that�s going to hurt the message in the end.

My professor said that if enough people saw this film, things might change. I said that was a bunch of shit. Most of the people who would go to see this movie, I argued, were people who were already converts of the message. If some other people did happen to see it that hadn�t thought about the issue before, they wouldn�t be able to reach any conclusion � because there wasn�t one. Thus, these people would leave the theater thinking, �Boy, that�s something to think about� and then go home and forget about it as soon as they turned on the TV.

�Ah, you�re such a cynic,� my professor said, excusing herself to the bathroom. When she came out, she had a different look on her face.

�Okay,� she said, �you were right. I asked some girls in the bathroom what they thought, and they said they didn�t understand what all that stuff about Canada was for. Then they started making jokes about their personal hygiene.�

What I thought was best about the film were the examples of the media using scare tactics on the general public � running something like 600 percent more stories on violence when the murder rate had dropped by about 20 percent over the past decade. All the clips about people needing to watch out for snakes, bees, and even their garbage disposals were perfect, and the stories were all the more absurd, because we�ve all probably seen some of these �News� stories.

When I got home, the newscaster gave a promo that went like this (and no, I am not kidding):


Jesus Christ! I was feeling pretty smug when I heard that, thinking that�s why I hate television journalism � it�s so time-orientated that they need to pitch every story like it�s the third sign of the apocalypse. But then I picked up the newspaper the next day and read about how the germs on my desk, my mouse, and even my stapler may be enough to make me ill � perhaps even kill me!

Meanwhile, this book details many of the same problems � why are stories about crime so prevalent, when most of the danger in the world comes from our own government? And why are there so few investigative stories of our elected officials besides the easy sex scandal? The answer seems pretty straightforward � journalists are lazy scumbags, and they think the general public is too stupid to understand anything more complicated than a stain on a blue dress.

They may be right. One acquaintance of mine recently noted that a friend of hers � who is a senior in college � didn�t know how many branches of government there were. When she tried to mention the House of Representatives, she received a blank stare in return.

The answer is obvious � I need to get a gun.

Finally, though the book was pretty good, consisting of short essays on various aspects of media coverage of the government, I did notice something rather disturbing. Occasionally, between essays, there would be a page consisting of little USA Today type factoids. There were a few times that the little graph or sentence would sum up a point in a more interesting manner. As a whole, these little asides were more entertaining that the story that accompanied it.

Dear god, I�m becoming one of them.


Rating: Worth Used.

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