The US Citizen: A Case of Waterlog

As the global community is expanding to a degree not seen within our human history, where a child in Peking can speak to a child in Detroit over the internet, where 20,000 tons of potatoes is directed by satellite as it crosses the Atlantic ocean, the individual citizen is bombarded with information. Bombarded with facts, body counts, trade deficit reports, advertisements for hemroid cream, it is enough to drive the sane citizen insane, and it has. It has created a population devoid of understanding and constantly asking, why us?

The massive influx of information has caused a great decline in the need of understanding current events. A general malaise has set into the way that the modern citizen informs themselves. What is to blame for the lack of luster for the most important aspect in a globalizing and constantly shifting political-economic world? How will the US respond to these new changes in the global political sphere? As Thomas Jefferson said to Charles Yancey in 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Ignorance is the death of free will, and as such the United States has made it a point from its conception for a well informed citizenry to take its education and the education of its future generations very seriously.

So then what has happened to that great educational spirit of the past? Has it faded, or has the means by which people acquire that knowledge driven them to avoid it altogether. The newspaper, television, radio, and the internet are all the modern means to acquire this information, to keep a well informed citizenry healthy and productive. What in all common practice what is the largest form of these modern means? The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press/Project for Excellence in Journalism survey in June of 2005 asked: "How have you been getting most of your news about national and international issues -- from television, from newspapers, from radio, from magazines, or from the Internet?" The data was as follows; 74% Television, 44% newspapers, 22% Radio, 5% Magazines, and 24% Internet. Almost three quarters of the American population receives their news from the television.

Which brings a very large question into the fray, how do these news networks provide for their income? Not off of the good of the education spirit, but by advertising. The media networks grow based off of ratings, nightly hits to websites, or monthly subscriptions to magazines, these all must be taken into account when understanding the global media system. Television needs to be sensationalized in order to attract an audience. Which is the basic marketing for any media outlet, however when it comes to important issues of the day, sensationalism and over reporting will impact the over all effectiveness of the media. Scare tactics are a known factor in news reporting. We are all familiar with these tactics; killer bees, Y2K, and other phenomena which were suppose to have wiped out all of humanity have yet to hit. But they are reported with such ferocity that we can assume the threat is immediate. By the time the actual issues of trade or international relations are reported, the viewer has been scared to death, and immediately drives to buy duct tape to avoid the impending anthrax attacks.

What has happened to our media? What has happened to our need for information and trust within out system? A Gallup-Poll of Sept. 13-15, 2004, asked this question. “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media -- such as newspapers, TV and radio -- when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly: a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?" 9% a great deal, 35% a fair amount, 39% not very much, 16 % not at all. The data suggests that 55% of the persons polled did not trust the accuracy of the mass media. More then half of the persons polled would not decide to trust the media and dismiss the information as faulty or “spun” for a political or economic purpose.

One would assume that in the light of the September 11th attacks that the citizens of the US would watch what was unfolding around the globe, but yet again one would assume. “The tragedies of Sept. 11 more than doubled the size of the evening network news audience from 13 percent of American adults in the week of Sept. 3 to more than 26 percent in the week of Sept. 10. However, as impressive as this may seem, the January 2001 Super Bowl attracted about the same number of viewers. Moreover, the evening news audience just as swiftly contracted to 15 percent of American adults in the week of September 17-23 and never rose more than one-and-a-half percentage points above that level in the following seven months," according to Scott Althaus, a UI professor of speech communication and political science. The American public distrusts the media; even so much as to avoid maintaining their knowledge on international affairs despite the largest shift in political-economic power since the end Cold War.

The drive of the American citizen to understand and to create opinions based off of fact is a disappearing act. In a report published in the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2, 10-29 (1996), stated, “We conclude that people learn about foreign affairs due to their opportunity, defined by their location in the social structure, and their motivation, indexed by attention paid to news accounts of world politics. The better educated and more politically attentive citizens also proved to be more informed in each country, whereas citizens who most often watched popular television entertainment programs proved to be less informed about foreign affairs.” Popular television is the basis of much of our media industry, and if it is the popular television programs which are rotting our national knowledge of events, what does that say about or state as a well informed nation?

As Americans reflect on their international appeal to other nations, the message must be getting around. In a poll conducted by 26,381 respondents across 25 countries by the BBC, “Among the 25 countries polled, the most common view in 18 of them is that the United States is having a mainly negative influence…A majority of Americans (57%) say that the US is having a mainly positive influence in the world. This is down from 63 percent a year ago and 71 percent two years ago.”

As the facts pour in on the subject, the American citizen is less informed and even less liked globally. As of late the current attitude is one which has stood since the end of World War 2, America is number one, and nothing which happens globally will affect the attitudes and behaviors of the American citizens. A US-centric globe has existed and in the eyes of many and the US-centric approach has worked in the past and will continue to work into the future, but to what extent. With the evolution of our international communications and global reach, US-centrist is constantly under attack. Globalization has led to the collapse of the US-centric approach to international affairs. Citizens now must inform themselves about the issues of the day, as new powers are emerging on the world stage. Are Americans up to this challenge, the answer is an overwhelming no.

However the US is not doomed to spend the rest of its existence floating lost in a sea of competition. The media which it has depended on for so long has let the citizenry down. The mass marketing of the media to the public, scare tactics, over reportage, the lost of direction for the press itself, has caused the meltdown of public awareness. The attitudes of the US citizens reflect this loss of sight. This is a very dangerous age to be living in, at the height of a great multicultural and global environment, news is no longer news, facts are no longer facts, and the age of reportage is simply dismissed. Political discussion has fallen to the new episode of the Real World, The View, Lost, or many of the “popular television” programs which are eating away at the core of our intelligentsia. In our current situation, the majority of the US can afford to be left out of the loop, to not care about the consequences of global conflict on the price of their new appliances, or their wholesale goods at Costco.

Only when conflicts are sensationalized do Americans become aware and become involved. It is a sad state of affairs that it takes big Hollywood celebrities, in over dramatized films, to get the citizenry to “wake up” to the issues, when the issues have been there over looked and forgotten just as quickly. That might be what it takes for a citizenry which is accustomed and expects, life to imitate what they are shown everyday in the “popular television” programming. Only 24% of the population receives their news from internet resources, a small percentage of the population, but in comparison to the other media forms, a massive percentage. The internet could be the breaking ground for the new informed citizen, one who has direct access to information, others who are willing to show a perspective, or others who have the desire to share information which would not be classified as “news worthy” to the top mass media outlets. Information important to the well being of the nation, but is not appealing to the scandal ridden stories of the front page.

As globalization is the new form of global evolution, inter-continental connectivity maybe our nation’s only hope for an enlightened population. It is also up to the citizenry to make that decision. Information cannot be forcibly jammed down the throats of every voting person. It is the collective responsibility to have a nation which is active in its political atmosphere. A nation which questions the political handlings of its leaders, and makes informed decisions based off of facts and data. Not information processed through the numbers board, and test groups, to see if it will create a spur among the nightly news viewers. Only then will we not descend into the political pitfall which Jefferson had written on, it expects what never was and never will be.