I’m becoming more convinced that the collective body of communication we refer to as as “the news” is a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction. When a journalist reports the circumstances of an event, but chooses to only mention certain portions of the event, the story becomes more of a work of fiction rather than a recounting of recent history. The last dozen or so months in Egypt are an alarming example of such behavior. Who has heard of Ayman Labib without having to google him? I would have much more respect for journalists and their editors if they simply began publishing their work as fiction.
I remember a lesson in Social Studies class in high school where we were shown three “news” clips; the video was identical, the voice-overs different. One was “neutral”, one had an entirely positive spin on the visuals, the other a totally negative one. Each one of them sounded completely believable; if I had only seen one of those clips, I would have sworn that what I heard was “the truth” because I’d seen it with my own eyes. I’ve never been able to entirely believe “news” reports since.
Yeah, I was being overly polite in my post. At best, the news is a narrow, blinkered, myopic view of the world. The issue of Egypt sort of re-ignited the problem for me. The ghastliness of what’s going on there is unreported in favor of wishful thinking and reporting that the post-Mubarak government is somehow an improvement for human rights. At best, they traded one dictator for another.