With Bush's call for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (and "defending the sanctity" of heterosexual ones), the new catchphrase now seems to be that we are at the beginnings of a "Culture War" between two stratified segments of society who are both unwavering in their beliefs. With the Bush Administration lending an ear to the Christian Conservatives, more and more of the nation will be formed to fit their agenda. This is very concerning for those Americans who do not fit into the mold set forth of what is "proper" in their eyes.
The Right has many things in their favor when it comes to the "Culture War", not the least of which is television news media. However the media may not be the problem exactly, but instead the Culture which it serves and that which the Right is attempting to "save".
One of the great ironies of today seems to me that we have worked very hard over the past few decades to encourage literacy- Nancy Reagan herself was one of the biggest supporters. And now that it seems so many of us can read, so many choose not to. This works highly in the favor of the Administration and those that feed off of a culture of willful ignorance.
It is telling that the Administration has worked so hard to keep pictures of the caskets of soldiers who died in Iraq off of the television screen; It is very common to see bloodied sneakers and chunks of hair of dead Iraqis who were unfortunate enough to be caught in the proximity of the suicide bomber of the day. When we see Americans, though, it is a group of soldiers milling around a Humvee. The only time you see the aftermath of the almost daily killings of America is the burned out shell of that same Humvee. The bodies are not associated with it- the young men and women who lost their lives, in the eyes of the Television news, cease to exist as something other than a number that is only to be referenced occasionally and only in a very abstract sense and followed by the faintest hint of a puzzled-and-powerless shrug.
When stories are broken on television (and that does not happen often- by and large stories are broken days/weeks- and in the case of the "Bush AWOL" story, years- by print newspapers), and even when it is just "analyses" of these events, there seems to be no emphasis on facts. Stories are no longer about what happened, but instead about the different opinions people have about said event (Bush announced his 2004 budget, "Democrats say there are inconsistencies with what he promised", let's go to George Stephanopolous for more...)
Perhaps it is a fear of being labeled as a "Liberal Media" that has caused the Evening News to avoid an analysis of facts- if you only report what people say instead of the actual numbers (thereby making "Democrats say there are inconsistencies" into "There are inconsistencies") then you do a disservice to American citizens that rely on such news for coverage.
It is unfortunate the so many people rely only on one (television) source for their news (Well, what Dan Rather says is good enough for me), but it seems like changing this would be undertaking the implementation of a greater cultural shift. One where people took responsibility for what they do, back up opinions with facts, and cease to simply spew rhetoric. Simply put- it's easier to just buy it. Since the few television news outlets are owned by the same corporations that benefit from all of these policies, it is only natural to assume that they put a great deal of thought into what gets covered. There is the viewer's idea, though, that if it isn't covered- well, it isn't news, it must not be important enough for me to care about.
So we are left with this larger Cultural War- not between Rights and Lefts, Homosexuals and Heterosexuals, Christians and Non-Christians- but instead between (to exaggerate) the Cynics and the Naïve. The hardest part about all of these "Wars", though, is that the vast majority of people fall somewhere in between.
In a Nation so dependent on media and one in which the cultural perception of the very people you need to reach most is that news is "boring", how do you approach subjects that require more thought? How do you get someone to read a newspaper or a book, or at least begin to question the validity of what they see and begin to search out alternative sources of information?