It seems as if all media and entertainment experts are very quick to reminisce about a so called “Golden Age”. All major industries from stage, music, video games to journalism all suffer from a compromise of what was once held to be “pure” and “ethical”. All rules appear to have been thrown out the window by questionable sell outs, play boys, and monstrous folks that coincidentally reached tremendous success despite the foundations of their “purists” ancestors. So, is the medium eroding our societies grace and civility? or is it simply meeting the demands of a culture always yearning for the most unflattering crevices of human behavior?
I , for one, think that the consumer’s taste has gotten rather mild , for a race that once flocked to coliseums to watch men fight to the death in a bloody arena, and got heated over bear bating, and cock fights at least we’ve managed to satisfy those less than faltering interests with fiction. The problem is that the masses seem to have blended all forms of art, media, and entertainment into one very thin, very shallow slush, and while many other mediums can follow suit without losing much more of their prestige, news media cannot take that leisure without ultimately being put to greater shame. But by whom? If the masses still consume it, then what’s the big deal?
But while mostly biased, sensationalist, and even sometimes false or poorly researched, there is another trap that news media falls into and that’s HOW they acquire their information. A story may be completely relevant, accurate but not deemed ethical because of the ways they acquire it or project it. While there are some horrendous accounts of detestable news gathering (News of The World being one of the most recents) some media outlets simply have the ability to share more with modern technology and our inherent need for voyeurism definitely fuels that fire.