Identity Crisis

The primary thesis of Wires and Lights is that entertainment media tells the most about a people because it tries to tell us what we want to hear. So what does this season of American television tell us about Americans?

Culturally, Americans are going through an identity crisis. Beliefs about who we are as a people are being challenged and shattered left and right. Of course we want to believe that regardless of past imperialist adventures, the United States is a force for good in the world, and at heart an honorable nation. Even in the face of growing economic inequality we want to believe that the U.S. is an economic bastion and a beacon of prosperity. But seeing the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and the financial Hindenburg that is Wall Street—well, the comfortable truths we relied on are revealed to have never been true in the first place.

The News is Pasteurized

Last Thursday on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Jon Stewart interviewed CNBC financial host Jim Cramer for the good part of a half-hour. It was a culmination of a week-long series of segments in which the The Daily Show attacked CNBC, a financial news network, for failures to responsibly or accurately report on the economic meltdown or any of its warning signs.

Afterward, the majority of news outlets framed the interview as a personal victory of Stewart over Cramer, the end of a “war of words” or the clash between two media personalities, saying that “Stewart won by knockout” or that “Stewart wrecked Cramer.” The fact that the news media focused on the personalities and less on the substance of the interview only reinforces a point made by Stewart

Echoes of Olympia

Just as the Olympics strives to display the forefront of the world’s athletic development, it’s also quite illuminating to take a look at the Games in terms of strides made in media and communications. The Olympics is one of the most-watched sporting events in the world, second only to the FIFA World Cup (and that record will certainly be challenged, if not utterly demolished, by the Beijing Games).

The coverage of sporting events tends to have different priorities than other entertainment media; aesthetic concerns often take a backseat to clarity (Leni Reifenstahl and NFL Films notwithstanding). So like a genre television show, the emphasis is on form, not content. And what can we say about the form of Olympic coverage?

Nobody to Blame

Many are surprised by the Chinese government’s open response to the quake disaster. They laud the government for having what seems to be an almost miraculous reversal of policy compared to other natural disasters—in 1976, the Chinese tried to suppress news of the Tangshan earthquake that killed 240,000 people. It covered up the Yellow River floods of the last decade, the SARS epidemic of several years ago, and the railway crash of this year. With nonstop news broadcasts, unlimited access (so far) for journalists both foreign and domestic, this seems like the herald of a new age of news freedom and the first step in greater openness and accountability. You couldn’t be more wrong.

For the People

During the April 9 broadcast of the CNN news program The Situation Room, commentator Jack Cafferty was asked about the relationship between the United States and China. He replied:
Well, I don’t know if China is any different, but—our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years…

Hypocrisy and Face: An Open Letter

The China-Tibet Olympics commotion depresses.

We all knew CCTV was a joke. Now we are disappointed to learn that the BBC has a political agenda as well, joining what Mick Hume of The Times calls the newest Olympic sport—”China bashing.” No Pulitzers for this mess. CNN will win the gold medal in “China bashing” for mislabeling Nepalese crackdown pictures as Chinese (the single most effective Chinese propaganda tool in years—good job CNN!); the BBC will have to settle for the silver for their coverage of the London Olympic relay.