The Glass Half Empty

Julie and I were at home watching the news the other night, when back-to-back new pieces nearly blew my mind.

The first, titled something like "The Consumer Pinch" had the usual news lead-in: "Americans work hard to get by every day...well, now there's a growing concern that hits home in a way that reaches each one of us..." Cut to a story about rising milk and grocery prices. They lead with the statistics first...how milk has gone up nearly twenty cents a gallon, with other staples following the lead. Groceries on the whole are up. They interview a couple of store goers who are concerned about the high cost of milk. Now they cut to the chase. The culprit? Rising corn prices brought on by the production of Ethanol. The report then draws on a talking head from Iowa State University who gives the "doomsday" prediction that corn prices are going nowhere but up as Ethanol production increases. The reporter, chagrined by this information, makes a standard final comment bemoaning that there "is little relief in sight from the American consumer."

The next story? America's crisis of high gas prices. Now, I don't know if some terribly ironic genius put them back-to-back to make a point or if it simply went over their heads. It was your trademark run-of-the-mill "Why are gas prices going up?" story where the reporter interviews the lady who is "suffering" by spending $125 to fill her TankUV so that she can drive it, by herself, to work in Orange County. This particular report did actually touch on the whole supply-and-demand logic that I haven't seen much (the prices are going up because we will pay them)...but the majority of the report was spent simply bemoaning high fuel prices with no mention of carpooling, bicycling, walking, or simply buying a vehicle that won't be confused with an aircraft carrier.

It blew me away. The first report, through a simple change in sequence and narration, could have been an exciting report on the increase of Ethanol production and consumption in the United States. You could absolutely include the hard fact that yes, groceries will go up as corn goes up, but what about the benefits? If you asked everybody outside of the supermarket to give thirty cents to help farmers and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, I bet they'd be all over it. But here, instead, we get Ethanol as the enemy. It's taking money out of your pocket, America! And then, to top it all off, a report detailing the astounding amount of gasoline this country alone burns through in a day. In the past few days, I've heard more reporting on this "grocery crisis," and few take them time to mention the benefits of Ethanol.

You can probably tell by now that I'm not the biggest fan of the mainstream news media...but it's becoming something more than their truly amazing ability to make decent human beings want to kill each other by polarizing them politically. The more I watch, the more I am discovering that whatever they do...be it telling you how "liberal" or "conservative" their untrustworthy counterparts are, be it sending Matt Laurer to third world countries to show us how cute poor people are, be it Bill O'Reilly milking human tragedy to look more noble...it's all about selling you Pledge, the new Dodge Stratus, and a crate of Lunchables. It's all about the money. And they're not dumb...they know that the way to get us to watch is to appeal to what we want...that very same money. And so stories don't focus on increasing Ethanol production or how to change our habits when it comes to consumption...they focus on the regrettable, but relatively minor side-effect of rising grocery costs and the long, slow whine of a rigidly gas-addicted culture as they fill up their Hummers.

And so I'm taking a media break. I'm tired of TV and radio news. I'm tired of hearing about how Liberals/Conservatives want to eat your children and destroy the world. I'm tired of problems without solutions. I'm tired of all the crises. I'm tired of all the blame. Most of all, as I learned the other night, I'm tired (and discouraged) by the fact that this is, ultimately, what we evidently want. Myopic, self-centered, blame-passing news about the one place and the one thing any of us seem to care about:

Our checkbooks.