Throughout Newton N. Minow’s article “A Vaster Wasteland”, I continually found myself nodding my head and agreeing with his six steps to transform the immense wasteland our media has become. His six steps in summary were to expand freedom, use technology for educational benefits, use technology to improve health-care, improve the communications that goes along with public safety, support the public television and radios, and operate in the public interest. Just like Minow said, our media needs to start asking what can communications do for our country? It is unreal to think of the power that a simple voice of a broadcaster can have. Instead of constantly talking about murder and crime our media can talk about education and the good people within our community. The media is not using their power to its full potential.
Not only did Newton have great steps to a better communications system but he also had some great examples on why its needs to be changed. His best example was within the step of strengthening the communications infrastructure for public safety and national security. The example had to do with the September 11th attack. Responders could not communicate with each other and emergency networks were backed up and busy. Think of the amount of lives that could have been saved if we had a stronger way of communicating with each other. The second plane might not have crashed into the other building. We will never know. All in all, we have to do something about our media if we want to change the world. Just like Gandhi said, “be the change you wish to see in the world.”