I'm slowly coming to grips with the death of journalism. And as a fan of satire, I'm also getting more comfortable with the idea of fake news shows like The Daily Show becoming our last best source for reason and logic. Jon Stewart's role in the eventual passage of the stalled 9/11 responder's bill has been compared to Edward R. Murrow's participation in turning public opinion against Joseph McCarthy. That it took a comedian, on a fake news show, on basic cable, to bring the issue to the forefront is for me the last necessary proof of the demise of journalism.
Is Jon Stewart our last hope for real journalism in this country?
That all of the "traditional" major news outlets failed to bring to light the Republican filibuster of a bill that would help care for the men and women suffering from illnesses and injuries sustained as a result of their response to the attacks of September 11th 2001 is ridiculous.
The problem is that news delivered in satire (The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SNL Weekend Update) requires a sophisticated audience, and that audience is limited and dwindling. More on that later.
In its best iteration, a free press is a watchdog and a lens on the political machine, and brings the inner workings of the government into the public view. Today, the role of journalist has been abdicated by news outlets and left to the masses. The bloggers, the tweeters, and apparently the fake news show comedians. What passes now for legitimate news is nothing more than entertainment and politicking. What is supposedly "just" entertainment is now our last best hope for actual journalism. Rather than having news outlets on the outside, in the center, looking in at both parties and all players in the government, we have mouthpieces for the parties. Fox News isn't news. It's propaganda for the right. And MSNBC is a lame attempt to "counter" Fox News and their increasingly popular form of entertaining the bored masses.
Other news outlets are hamstrung by shrinking budgets and corporate ties that preclude them from investigating anything of meaning.
It's a brilliant scheme, if you're interested in profiting from the political machine. It's political fast food, served right to our television and computer screens. It's quick, it's simple, it's unchallenging, it's profitable, and it's very, very bad for us.
Like fast food, the discourse that passes for news in the modern world is popular because it is easy and cheap. And as much as I want to blame McDonalds, errr Fox News, for this, it's our fault, isn't it? We're the consumers. If we demanded something different, the market would deliver it to us. But there is an increasing demand for the tasteless, mass-produced, nutrition-free flavors of Fox News. Because they are creating the customers at a very young age.
Deep Fat Fried and Delicious: The Future of Education
Which brings me to my main point. Follow along as I predict the demise of public higher education...
Franklin supposedly believed that a functioning democracy relied on an educated populace. While there is some debate about what be meant by "educated," we like to translate that now as literate and thoughtful. The idea is that the individual, through education, can become knowledgeable enough to be trusted with his or her vote. Sure, the voter will decide things based primarily in his or her self-interest, but when everyone is doing this, the result is a representative impression of the citizenry.
This is why the conservative right hates education. They rely on simple thinking and need to be sure that no one pulls back the curtain to discover what is behind it all. Their message is increasingly incomprehensible to the educated and thoughtful. Worse, it is distasteful. So, like the tobacco industry before them, the GOP has to figure out how to keep creating customers in a world that should, by all measures, be trending more liberal than ever. Tobacco giants started hooking younger and younger kids on their product. Problem solved. The right is starting young, too. They're going after public education. Here's how it works.
You start by name calling. You go after the professionals in the field and engage in ad hominem attacks and a little crafty wordplay. Teachers and professors aren't professionals who have studied and worked hard. They're "liberal elites" who don't understand the "real world." You discount their accomplishments by casting aspersions on academia as a whole. Of COURSE the professor who studies politics thinks the GOP policies are flawed, he's a product of the liberal academic community!
Meanwhile, you go after the funding. But you can't just stop funding education, which in most states is the constitutional obligation of the government and is something of a sacred cow in budget development. What you do is make the bureaucracy of education so bloated and complex that it becomes unwieldy and ineffective. You demand - as a good fiscal conservative should - extensive accountability measures (which cost millions to implement) to make sure taxpayer money isn't being wasted. And you commission studies that compare other countries' education successes to the failures of our own, ignoring roughly a zillion variables that account for the differences (says someone who has conducted one such study).
And instead of funding education with hard dollars, you maintain budgets through soft money. Grants and awards from different agencies and companies. Those grants come with their own inefficiencies and often force the educational institution to steer energies and dollars in a direction they otherwise wouldn't. To get some funds, an arts school becomes a manufacturing school, for example, despite not having the student base nor the facilities for such a switch.
Now, once this is all in place, you sit and wait. While the public is flush with cash and jobs are plentiful, all is well with the world.
And now, when the economy goes in the tank, you point to the bloated bureaucracies of the schools and all the money being spent on wasteful accountability programs and middle management and you cut the hard money from the budget. All that's left are grants, gifts, and awards. But guess what, in a depressed economy, these go down too!
But you see, if you're the GOP, this is what you want. The dumber the population the better, because what you want to sell isn't good for anyone. The GOP (and to be fair, all high level politicians) is controlled by and for the causes of big corporations, and education isn't profitable (at least not in its purest form). The segment of our population that needs higher education the most (e.g. those who cannot pay for it out of pocket) will be increasingly denied access to education as the states shift the burden from the tax roles to the individual.
As our world gets more complex and global, as the issues that effect us get deeper and more difficult to understand, we need more education, not less. We need more sanity and reason, not hyperbole. The issues pundits choose to discuss are easily dichotomized (global warming, abortion, gay rights, taxes) so they are easy to yell about. But to actually think critically about any one of those issues can require time, focus, and knowledge. All of which a liberal arts education provides.
The Non Project is the new home for the random essays, thoughts, notes, and ideas that don't belong in any of my other writing projects. Topics are random and unfocused. Postings are sporadic and unpredictably timed. Follow The Non Project and share it with your friends. Comments and rants are welcomed and encouraged.
Unfortunately, the demise of the middle class is taking care of both the education and prosperity of the US as witnessed by the moving of corporate resources out of the US and to countries with a growing middle class. This is going to be interesting to see where that takes us.
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