Um, sorry, I had to get that off my chest.
Like a lot of Americans tonight, I am (half) watching the dramatic rescue of those trapped Chilean miners as I type this. The sound is muted. The big-screen visual is more than enough. I hope the miners are safely rescued. (And the prospects look good thus far.) My cynic’s lament, O noble friends, isn’t about them.
What galls me is the gratuitous international press presence. Apart from CNN, there are reportedly over 700 news organizations with reporters at the rescue site. Over 700! Yes, yes, yeeesss – it’s a news story tailor-made for live television, complete with the anticipated happy ending, in HiDef. The trouble is that while there is legitimate news to cover, the media are there mostly for the guaranteed ratings. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. The media gotta make money and eat, too. But the breathless frenzy, over the top sentimentalizing (the media are calling the miners “heroes” now) and the total blackout of all other news is a tad much. (And before this incident, can you recall when you last heard a news report about Chile? Yeah, I can’t either. Few ratings in straight foreign news reporting, you know.)
Media outlets defensively say that the world beyond Chile is captivated by the miner rescue story. Ergo, their presence. That could be true. But the world wouldn’t know about the story without the media’s modern modus operandi. It’s the old chicken and egg shtick. But such is life in the Instant News Epoch of our Cenozoic Era.
Happily, as I end this, the first miner has emerged safely and a second is due shortly. And that’s worth a great deal more than the Media, O Breaker of News, at the moment.
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