In 1992 I attended a lecture by Noam Chomsky at a high school auditorium in Los Angeles. During the Q&A Professor Chomsky was asked what televised news sources he recommended and he said said none of them. He had particularly biting comments to make about how CNN “packaged” the (first) Gulf War as infotainment with clips of military jets taking off, waving American flags and footage of targets being hit that looked like video-games with a martial beat soundtrack. How can you expect the public to have an objective view of the country’s foreign policy and military actions, he asked the audience, when they’re fed images from the military itself via a tightly controlled press pool designed to foster an “us vs. them” mindset by a for profit news outlet who find their highest ratings in the midst of war, scandal and crisis? And NBC was at this time owned by General Electric, the #1 company in the world to make money from war. Who could you trust?

I used to be an absolute TV news junkie, but after his words sank in, I found the more and more I drifted away from it. I did most certainly feel manipulated whenever I was watching CNN. It became really fucking annoying to me once it had been pointed out so bluntly what they were up to and how far up the White House’s asshole they’d climbed. It’s worth mentioning that it was four years prior to the launch of Fox News when Noam Chomsky made these observations. To satiate my infomania, I was soon subscribing to five daily papers and 70 monthly magazines that ranged from far-right and far-left conspiracy theory zines, to Vanity Fair and everything in between. In addition to things like In These Times or Z magazine, I also subscribed to The National Review (before it became absolutely worthless on every level) and Free American and various libertarian publications. I picked up anarchist monthlies, eco warrior magazines and just basically everything. Extreme perhaps, but at least my information sources did not have an emotionally leading soundtrack and ludicrous music video montages of saluting soldiers, missiles being fired to slaughter people at a distance and red, white and blue flags flying in the wind.

Much of the time, TV news just felt like I was being shouted at by idiots. It was infuriating. By 1996—the year Fox News launched although I was barely aware of it at the time—I cancelled cable because I never ever watched it and it was just a waste of $70 bucks a month. If it wasn’t for my wife, I’d have never had it since (and I still never watch TV news unless there’s something really significant happening).

The brilliant and sardonic British writer and TV presenter, Charlie Brooker performs a parallel service for BBC viewers that Professor Chomsky once did for me, to illustrate a similar point he made recently—with well-chosen clips—about the despicable way the news media is treating the crisis in Japan. Watch this, it’s really good.
 

 
(via Cynical-C)

Previously on DM:
Charlie Brooker’s How TV Ruined Your Life.