Our culture

Barak Obama recently made an observation that I want to share with you. He pointed out that we are a country that prizes the inconsequential at the expense of the important.

He said: "We see . . . a media culture that sensationalizes the trivial and trivializes the profound, in a 24-hour news network bonanza that never fails to keep us posted on how many days Paris Hilton will spend in jail but often fails to update us on the continuing genocide in Darfur or the recovery effort in New Orleans or the poverty that plagues too many American streets,"

Bush encourages this trend. He glorifies being inarticulate and disdains books. His responses to serious questions are often trivial, if not downright silly. But the worst offender is TV news. Even the "serious" TV news shows skim across their time slot like a pebble of inquiry skimming across a pond of issues. Only C-Span and Public TV attempt to dive into an issue.

Magazine and newspaper circulation is down, but the print media do have serious content and a devoted readership. More and more, we are going to the Internet to get news. How many of us only read the side of a controversy that supports our own opinions. How much debate is there on the Internet?

Still, the Internet and print media offer the best alternative to TV and to the trend that Obama spoke of recently.