It doesn’t look like anything can possibly happen before year’s end that eclipses the media attention received by the finding and killing of Osama Bin Laden—and we are sure to endure several more months of extensive Bin Laden coverage. While the story is certainly significant enough to warrant such an overwhelming level of attention from the pundits and populace, and is in no way directly comparable to Balloon Boy-esque media distractions, it remains distinctly, disturbingly possible that the effect will be almost identical where it matters most.
This deeply problematic trend has persisted at least for decades, but now, with the United States facing a seemingly endless myriad of domestic hardships and internal conflicts, not to mention the persistence of genocide and other institutionalized human rights violations all over the world, it just might be our last chance to take step one on the road to recovery.
We have a problem. Fifteen years ago, Dolly the Sheep was cloned, and nothing else mattered to the media until the Monica Lewinsky Scandal got into full swing. Included in that “nothing” was the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing, a domestic terrorist attack carried out by a member of the Christian Identity Movement, which begs the question—might Eric Robert Rudolph's motives have "mattered" more to the media if is name was Mohammed Khan?
As the Monica Lewinsky story slowly morphed into the Clinton impeachment story, not without plenty of media assistance, several African countries were being faced with genocide, but in America, those stories wouldn’t break until millions of innocent lives had already been lost.
The first year of the new millennium was ushered in by the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit—one of the critical planning stages for 9/11—as well as the largest corporate merger in history, but neither story warranted the kind of coverage received by the little Cuban boy that divided a nation. Until the internationally humiliating Presidential Election of 2000, Elian Gonzalez had a virtual news media monopoly, and while we focused all of our attention on him, the terrorist group we helped create was planning the most horrific attack in American history.
In the wake of the September 11th attacks, again there was only one story in the news, but it wasn't much of a story at all. It was footage of two enormous buildings crumbling to the ground being played over and over, giving many children the impression that America was being consistently attacked. Not just attacked; Jihad became one of the most frequently used terms by members of the media, despite their failure to label Eric Rudolph's act as a Christian Crusade.
The following years would see the PATRIOT Act strip American citizens of some of their basic civil liberties, in addition to Operation Iraqi Freedom, which itself brought about the Fallujah Massacre and Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Thankfully for those of us who prefer willful ignorance, Terri Schiavo's complex family affairs provided a perfect excuse for the news media to avoid telling the truth about the Iraq War as often as possible, as well as giving Christian Extremists what they saw as a gift-wrapped opportunity to push their political agenda.
After Terri Schiavo was allowed to pass on and the subsequent chatter subsided, Pope John Paul II followed her into the afterlife and was succeeded by Joseph Ratzinger, an event that—like a royal wedding—always garners at least a few weeks of obsessive media coverage. By the time everyone wiped away their tears, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and substandard levee systems devastated the poorest areas of New Orleans. In this rare instance, not only did the media appear to be doing their jobs, but—in the first few days—they appeared to be the only people doing so. In the months that followed the flooding, however, diligent reporting on what many believed was Government negligence that bordered on criminal found no place in between the repeating reels of footage depicting New Orleanians being air-lifted one-by-one. There were critical questions that needed to be asked, but the uplifting footage drew higher ratings, just as the morbid footage had following the September 11th attacks.
As soon as Katrina footage stopped showing up on the news, the upcoming Presidential Election took over the airwaves—despite the fact that it was still literally years away. First it was Rudy and Hillary. Soon John Edwards and Mitt Romney stepped into the ring, and once Barack Obama declared his candidacy, his media-manifested rivalry with then-Senator Clinton became the nation's newest obsession. With the primary behind him and the wind at his back, Obama met Sarah Palin, who—despite causing John McCain to suffer an embarrassing defeat—became a media superstar following the election. Meanwhile, the extremely prolonged primary season allowed the American people and pundits to ignore the looming sub-prime mortgage crisis, which would push the nation closer to the brink of a second Great Depression than ever before.
The first year of Barack Obama's Presidency saw only two stories consistently in the news: the senseless, borderline-bigoted faction of the blossoming Tea Party Movement, and the death of Pop Superstar Michael Jackson. There was no opportunity to talk rationally about the economy recovery, or the legitimate arguments posed by the thoughtful, open-minded members of the Tea Party. Just accusations that President Obama was a Socialist, and video memorials of Michael Jackson. Again, we clung to the stories that were easy to wrap our heads and consciences around, and ignored vital inquiries that, if made, might have done a lot of good.
Year two of the Obama Presidency was all disaster in the media. First, Haiti was hit by an earthquake that crumbled the nation's capital city, and the media tried to repeat their Katrina performance, but with the new President acting immediately, there was less opportunity for media members to step outside the box of their job descriptions. There was, however a major opportunity for the media to lead a serious conversation about off-shore drilling a few months later, when the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill began. Instead of having that conversation, though, we continually watched underwater footage of bubbling oil, with the occasional break for a clip of something horrific that BP-CEO Tony Hayward had said. Nothing was said about any oil giant other than BP, and there was no media obsession about the dangers of off-shore drilling techniques. Tony Hayward was the enemy; BP alone would be held accountable.
This year, we have a tremendous chance to break the chain of short-sightedness. We missed one opportunity already when Gabby Giffords was shot, and we had no conversation about responsible gun control. Now, Osama Bin Laden has just been found and killed. Vital questions need to be asked. It is on us to maintain their vitality, and on us to demand that those whose job it is to ask questions do so properly. We live in a Democracy, should we choose to keep or reclaim it. No matter how the situation may seem, we control the media—and the government.