Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.
~Mother Teresa
The Middle East peace process. What an oxymoron! Leaders, even some Nobel Peace Prize winners, call out for peace. But the killing continues. Suicide bombers slaughter dozens of unsuspecting diners in seaside cafes; bulldozers reduce humble homes to rubble, crushing their occupants inside. And there’s no end yet in sight.
Contrast this scenario with the ongoing process in South Africa: blacks and whites living together in peace. Shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the democratic elections of 1994, courageous folks from opposing political factions decided to reconcile their differences rather than persist in armed struggle. South Africa certainly has its challenges to overcome; civil war, however, is not among them. (more…)
Saturday, May 25th, 2002What the media’s not telling you can hurt you.
I’m deeply concerned about the merger mania that has swept our industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news, and making the bottom line sometimes seem like the only line. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be.
The message of the media is the commercial.
If you’ve paid much attention to the news recently, you’ve probably discovered a lot of stories about loss of life, natural disasters, sexual peccadilloes, and celebrity lifestyles. Reports that might really inform us on the critical issues of the day are infrequent if not missing altogether. Thus Robert Blake’s arrest on murder charges gets more coverage than single moms struggling to care for their children. Another exposé of pedophile priests wins out over a real debate about the reasons for the proposed war with Iraq.
Why? The bottom line. First of all, covering fires, auto wrecks, and trials is cheap and easy. It doesn’t take a first-rate journalist to videotape a burning building and interview the distraught owner. More significantly in this era of media mega-mergers, the corporations that own the news outlets don’t want coverage that might interfere with the hawking of their wares or those of their advertisers.
So in 1997 when two reporters at the Tampa, Florida Fox Television affiliate prepared to air their investigative report on the potential dangers of bGH (bovine growth hormone), an artificial hormone that had found its way into the milk supply, the story was scotched. Monsanto, the manufacturer of BGH, blocked the report from the airways by protesting to Fox’s network news division. “We paid three billion dollars for these stations. We’ll decide what the news is,” declared one Fox executive. (more…)
Saturday, May 11th, 2002
