We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflects this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize the television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television, and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late. —Edward R. Murrow, RTNDA award speech, October 25, 1958
Almost five decades ago, Edward R Murrow warned us of the power and potential of television, specifically, and mass media generally. Two generations later, the world of Murrow’s television seems unthinkably antiquated, a relic more akin to a fossil than to a powerful progenitor of the hyper-media society in which we all swim today.
Yet his words and his warning remain vital. We are just as allergic to unpleasant or disturbing information, but our reactivity has produced a caustic polarization not only in the news media but in our collective and individual souls. We must take a look at how social media deliberately leverages our desire to be distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated.
