RSSDanger of a twenty-four hour news cycle: Tailor made for the attention span of the American public
Michael Haltman | November 28, 2010
TSA groping, the 24-hour news cycle story d'jour
The availability of news 24 hours a day is great for those of us who for one reason or another have trouble sleeping through the night. Years ago, and I mean years ago, the only option was to watch the test pattern that television stations used after signing-off for the night. That is certainly not the case today.
The problem with this never ending need to capture the attention of the American public is that in order to compel viewers to watch, the only story that matters is the story of the day. The news story d'jour if you will. This news model works incredibly well because it plays directly into the miniscule attention span of the American public. The mentality of "I want it and I want it now!"
The problem with this way of thinking is that it develops complacency and prevents us from leaning on our representatives in Washington for real solutions to real problems. Not that leaning on them will necessarily result in action that will produce real benefit, but not forcing them to focus guarantees it.
The October crisis
Before you look below, what story dominated the airwaves from late October into the beginning of November...
If for some reason you happen to be drawing a blank, the story had to do with bombs being placed on cargo planes disguised as ink cartridges, originating in Yemen with some of them close to detonating. Remember now?
Cargo entering the US is a huge problem due to the sheer amount of it, and that it travels on trucks, cargo ships, cargo planes and even in diplomatic pouches (I included this as food for thought because diplomatic pouches cannot be searched). Extremely small amounts of this cargo are checked and even then those checks will mostly be cursory. Think about what could be smuggled in and the prospect is terrifying (i.e. nuclear material of some kind).
So what steps have been taken since that time to insure that the issue of cargo entering the US is addressed? My guess is that there have been some committee meetings but no real sense of urgency in Washington as the story has since faded from view, replaced by the TSA. What would make the story resurface? I think we know the answer to that which is, God forbid, another attack.
My point? A cargo plane crashed soon after takeoff in Pakistan today. Was it engine failure? The weather? Pilot error? Or could it have been a bomb that went off on schedule over a densely populated part of Karachi or that went of early by accident?
Focused on issues
Despite the importance of developing a fix for airport security that does not include the potential for cavity searches (we could always start with the obvious that includes profiling, with heightened scrutiny of whoever has proven to be involved in the past), we as a society need to stay focused on the myriad of issues that we face today.
We hear about North Korea on a small scale (although that could be the next story d'jour), Iranian nukes every once in a while, the slow collapse of the EU and some of the eery similarities to what is happening in the US, the Ground Zero mosque and other story's who had their day in the sun and have faded from the public consciousness. This, although they are no less dangerous or less important than they were before.
We as a society need to take responsibility for, and to focus on all of the story's that have the potential to impact us in a negative way, and to somehow make sure that the leadership in Washington is focusing on it too.
There is, unfortunately, no group of people more focused primarily on the story d'jour than our representatives in Washington. We must stay on top of them to make sure that they have their collective eye on the prize (national security etc.). One of the best ways we can accomplish that is to do the same thing ourselves!
Article also appears at Death By 1000 Papercuts.
Contributor's website: http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/
Filed Under Conservative Musings, North Korea
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