How the media shapes our culture

When I attended San Jose State University in the late-1980s, I was lucky enough to stumble into a class titled "Mass Media and Culture", taught by Professor Stanley Baran. Dr. Baran was my first introduction into the Libertarian Party and forever changed my views on a number of socal and political issues. One of the lessons involved how we as a country received our information. Rememeber in the late-80s, the Internet wasn't available to the masses and our main source of news (other than the local paper) was generally CBS, ABC, and NBC. Dr. Baran introduced to the phenomenon of finding "alternate" sources for reporting of events. At first, we thought "Wait, there's three networks. Isn't that enough?" He pointed out something crucial that most people didn't realize -- to save costs, the networks generally would share production of events, speeches, etc. on a rotating basis. The end result was that the audience saw the same thing, regardless of the network. Suddenly, this became a frightening thought as it dawned on us that we were only seeing one interpretation of reality, not multiple ones. This singular interpretation prevented us from forming our own opinions on what really happened and instead we were fed whatever the networks wanted us to see.

At the same time, I was very much into the local music and club scene, spending far too much time at concerts instead of studying. My father likes to say that I never let my coursework interfere with my college education. Shortly after that illuminating lecture from Dr. Baran, I attended a concert by a rock band that was a little past their time, but still extremely popular. The concert was a sellout with 15,000 or so people having a ball, singing along, and enjoying the experience. The local newspaper's music columnist slammed the show in his weekly concert review saying that it was a bad show, silly music and he couldn't understand why anyone was hanging on to that kind of music when the grunge sound eminating from Seattle was the greatest thing in the world. This made me take pause -- this columnist's opinion was in direct contradiction to what I saw and experienced (along with 15,000 others). Dr. Baran's lesson finally made sense. If I hadn't attended the show, I would have accepted what the reviewer said as fact. For a college student, this was a mind-blower.

Keep this in mind in the future when watching TV or reading a mainstream publication. In a standard transaction, there is a product, buyers and a seller. Many people foolishly think that the audience is the buyer, the advertiser is the seller and that the TV show/newspaper is the product. WRONG! In reality, YOU are the product, being sold by the network/newspaper/media outlet to the advertiser. When looked at from that perspective, it's easy to see why so many programs are dumbed down to the largest audience, therefore generating the largest amount of income via advertising dollars. Wonder why critically acclaimed shows with small audiences get cancelled but garbage such as "Survivor" just won't die?? It's because there are more brain-dead, lazy people with money to spend than there are people who are willing to think and take responsibility. The shows on TV -- including the news -- have nothing to do with quality. They are only concerned about advertising revenue which is derived from the size of the audience.

Of course, I'm salivating at the fallout from this season's "Survivor" where they pit four races against one another. Ain't that gonna be a hoot!!