Media Cocoons: It’s Safe & Warm Inside

You would think message control would be more difficult with so many outlets.

Picking on cable television “news” is way, way too easy. With the exception of BBC News and Al Jazeera English – both of which you’ll be extremely hard pressed to find in their actually-transmitted 24-hour format, the selection of “news” programming available to Americans at best are fact-based shows wrapped in deep layers of opinion and spin. This is sadly expected these days – it’s the norm. Should a network arise that promises to report actual news on a 24-hour basis it would appear “cutting edge” and “different”.

One has to travel outside the media available to this country to see how truth and fact is being manipulated, slightly spun, or deflected far away enough from the spotlight that it misses critical public awareness it needs. Fortunately, some media makes it far too simple to stand back and look at the selective manipulation of reality that is packaged and sold to us.

The quickest and most impressive way to observe the manipulation of reality is provided by Time Magazine and their website dedicated to viewing the front page of their U.S., European, Asian, and South Pacific editions. Viewing the December 5, 2011, covers shows the following:

Time Magazine's front covers for December 5, 2011

For all other editions other than the U.S. edition, the lead story is Egypt’s renewed and more violent protests against the government, now a near military-junta that took over in the wake of the resignation of President Mubarak. Upcoming elections are being conducted in such a chaotic environment there is rapidly decreasing hope that a truly representative government may be able to form, and the country will effectively pass from one dictatorship to another flavor of the same. Given Egypt’s strategic importance in the world – whether that be Arab opinion, controlling the Suez Canal, or not going to war with Israel, what is unfolding in Egypt would seem to fit the definition of “important”.

There’s a real dichotomy going on between the international editions and the U.S. edition. Outside of the U.S. there is grit, there is conflict, there is death, fear, hope, fight, and reprisal. Inside it’s safe, it’s warm, there’s even a cartoon figure smiling at you. It’s alright. The icky details about the scary world outside are still in the magazine, they’re just in the third story, not the lead, and certainly not the cover.

This isn’t an isolated incident, by the way. Let’s just look at previous issues from the past couple of months:

Time Magazine covers for November 28, 2011

Who is Erdogan? Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey is a key figure in a stable country bordering a very unstable part of the world – the Middle East. Facing off against internal threats to make the country more religious while opposition charges of already taking the country too far from its secular past are just an ongoing conflict Erdogan has to deal with. Presently his stance on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s ability, or lack there of, to remain in power could have large geopolitical ramifications in 2012 as another Libyan-scale conflict looms on the horizon.

Time Magazine covers for October 24, 2011

To be absolutely fair, what would have probably a firestorm-creating cover headline in the U.S. (or at least something for the pundits to pundit about for a cycle or two) was pre-empted by a story on Occupy Wall Street. That can’t be completely blamed on Time, though Afghanistan was just as screwed up for the next issue as it was for this one, as it is now, as it will continue to be for the foreseeable future, so if time is needed for this story to be run – there’s plenty of it.

Time Magazine covers for October 3, 2011

While the United States has been licking its economic wounds from the 2008 crash, a new – and potentially worse – crash is potentially on the horizon in Europe. A collective lackluster response to ever-increasing debt burdens in the Euro-using members of the European Union are putting the continent’s greatest power, Germany, in the awkward position of forcing member states to adopt economic reforms on their terms, or preside over the eventual collapse of the Euro currency, and maybe even the Union itself. Such an unorganized unwinding and resulting currency chaos would undoubtedly put heavy downward pressure on all economies in the region, with globalization helping that contagion spread the world over, including negative ramifications for our own fragile recovery. An attention-getting primer on that might be prudent.

Now Time, nor similar publications with international editions, are not guilty of a purposeful campaign of misinformation and distraction to the public of key issues of the day. Their direct aim is to not keep Americans less informed. They are complicit in the end results, though. The primary motivator of a news magazine in this country – much like anything that is printed to paper and sold in stores – is to make money, and lots and lots of money at that. The difference between the American and international editions of this magazine are quite likely less a result of a campaign of willing misinformation and instead the result of marketing departments, focus groups, surveys, and opinion by “experts” of what the American people want. Since enough people responded favorably to stories with less actual importance and more fluff, more fluff is what is seen – since that is seen as the quickest way to a profit.

Again, that is a drawback to the system as it exists today. The end goal is money and profit – any educational and informative value that may be provided along the way is purely accidental or at least a coincidence.