Letter to the Editor
Lynchburg News and Advance
15 September 2009
In the recent days we have seen the true
price of a public discourse which has been radicalized to a point if Insanity.
The question of our time has become: why has our society become less civil? Many may think this a modern phenomena but
they would be wrong. The divisive nature
of the current national rhetoric has emerged from a pattern of public
interaction with the media that was established
in the earliest years of the Republic. The founders rightly saw the need
for a free flow of information and ideas in order to realize personal and
national success.
From the very beginning it was the men who operated media
outlets who established the direction of our collective national debate and
discussion. In the early republic
journalistic rhetoric was used to develop a national consensus and
identity. Our sense of unity under a
common set of political and cultural virtues arose from the media's creation of
what might be called Americanness. Media
fueled patriotic fervor and as a result America was born out of an intense
sense of nationalism, heightened by media editorials, such as journalist John L.
O'Sullivan's Manifest Destiny, which propelled
the expansion of our country from thirteen states on the eastern shore of this
continent to a continental power win fifty years.
However as with most things there was a
negative side to a proactive media. By
the time of Thomas Jefferson's campaign for President in 1800 a new element had
appeared in the rhetoric which by then was the mainstay for discussing the
politics in the nation. It was felt by
some that the "Public" would need the media to illustrate, illuminate and frame the context of a proper
national dialogue in the public sphere.
In other words the media would tell or inform us what traits were to be contained
in the American identity and the values we should share. Founding Father John Adams felt the value
of a independent media was in the spread of knowledge, which in turn created a public that would be
more sensible to the wrongs being done them.
Adams hoped that educated and
aware American's would be emancipated
from ignorance and timidity, better
equipping them to participate in the governance of the country.
Over the succeeding 200 plus years the
media, now grown to include Movies, Radio, Internet etc., has become even more so the arbiter of what it
means to be an American. Always an
influential force in the molding of popular culture it has become even more powerful
as the illustrator of public opinion. Over
the last twenty years Americans have become thoroughly inundated with a plethora
of news and information, which when coupled to our tradition of accepting the
media as the arbiter of American values has left us open to indoctrination and less inclined
to self evaluation. In the last few
years the rhetoric has become so polarizing, we have come to a point in the
history of our nation where the model created so long ago is broken. Whereas in the In the past media liberated
us from ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, we now find ourselves exposed to a manipulative
and omnipresent tyranny of the global media itself. The
media is no longer the watchdog of our rights, but rather the ownership of the
media would have us subordinate our
right to think independently to the power of their opinion.
Instead of creating a national
consensus the media now seems to serve the cause of disunion and
disharmony. So much of what passes for
news and information is little less than entertainment packaged to ensure
commercial success to the corporation and its shareholders. Wild innuendo and rumor have replace the true
reporting of facts. Media personalities
have attained star status and they value shock and awe over truth. It has become common place for the media
itself to display a lack of decorum and respect for what in the past were the
values of a more virtuous America. If we are truly concerned with the tone of
public discourse ,the lack of personal courtesy, and the failure of our
politicians and people to act with respect for the institutions that we cherish,
we shall have to shed our dependence on the popular twenty-four hour news media
and the politically stilted presentations they employ. We must quickly and firmly demand that
America's media reclaim the moral high
ground and return to their original purposes.
There must be a re-examination of
practices followed by the media and a demand for higher standards of
professionalism and non-partisanship. To
not do so will only perpetuate and accentuate the collapse of our Republic. Even a free press must be held accountable and responsible to the values of
Republicanism.
Mark R. Day
Lynchburg, Virginia
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