JON RAPPOPORT writes that every television newscast is stagecraft. This is an obvious point, but it is amazing how the average viewer denies it and participates in what is fake:

Focus on the network evening news. This is where the staging is done well.

First, we have the image itself, the colors in foreground and background, the blend of restful and charged hues. The anchor and his/her smooth style.

Then we have the shifting of venue from the studio to reporters in the field, demonstrating the reach of coverage: the planet. As if this equals authenticity.

Actually, those reporters in the field rarely dig up information on location. A correspondent standing on a rooftop in Cairo could just as well be positioned in a bathroom in a Las Vegas McDonald’s. His report would be identical.

[…]

If, at the end of the newscast, the viewer bothered to review the stories and his own reactions to them, he would realize he’d learned nothing. But reflection is not the game.

In fact, the flow of the news stories has washed over him and created very little except a sense of (false) continuity.

It would never occur to him to wonder: are the squabbling political legislators really two branches of the same Party? Does government have the Constitutional right to incur this much debt? Where is all that money coming from? Taxes? Other sources? Who invents money?

Is the flu dangerous for most people? If not, why not? Do governments overstate case numbers? How do they actually test patients for the flu? Are the tests accurate? Are they just trying to convince us to get vaccines?

What happens when the government has overwhelming force and citizens have no guns?

When researchers keep saying “may” and “could,” does that mean they’ve actually discovered something useful about autism, or are they just hyping their own work and trying to get funding for their next project?

These are only a few of the many questions the typical viewer never considers.

[cont.]

Please follow and like us: