So, you are reading the news and you come to an item about Afghanistan, and someone puts a map on the screen in which Syria is labeled 'Afghanistan'. What happens next? Well, not much, it seems, you just go on reading the story. Or say you come to a news item about Iraq, and you see that it is referring constantly to Al Quaeda. It wasn't that long ago, you vaguely remember, that you were reading stories in which insurgents, and Sunni and Shiite militias, and the resistance, and Baathists, were appearing, and American generals were confirming that Al-Quaeda made up only a tiny percentage of fighters in Iraq. Ah well, you shrug, memory not what it was, I must be wrong, and you carry on reading.
In another galaxy, far far away. Well, in another time, anyway, newsreaders, news presenters, morning show hosts, etc, people who read the news to the public, always seemed to be knowledgeable about the news they were reading. There was a feeling they had spent the day reading the morning newspapers, a range of them, making phone calls, heading off to have lunch with a politician or two. They were people who knew some history, could identify where countries were on the map and what language was spoken there, and who its leaders were.
Now the equivalent people seem to be totally ignorant of anything in the world around them, the content of the news, except for the celebrity part, about which they seem to study avidly. For the rest though they represent just a blank slate, on which can be projected, by the media owners and their willing helpers among managers and producers, whatever narrative it is desired the public should believe.
Not only do these willing front persons, actual or potential celebrities themselves, not know anything about politics or society, but they give the impression of not wanting to know, blank page-hood being just fine by them. It is perhaps an attitude, shared by officers and soldiers alike in wartime, that the less the frontline soldier knows the better, then, if captured by the enemy they can reveal nothing. Far better for our newsreaders to know nothing than to risk revealing truth with a chuckle or a raised eyebrow in the wrong place.
If you are captured by the enemy - loose lips sink takeovers, careless talk costs share prices.
And increasingly of course this practice is copied by the political parties. Leaders of governments now give the Sergeant Schultz impression of knowing nothing and wanting to know nothing. Once upon a time leaders seemed to have done their homework, be ready to meet foreign leaders on equally informed terms, be ready to engage in free-wheeling press conferences, confidently answering every question.
Not any more. There is a prepared script, and deviation from it is not possible because the leader knows no more than is on the paper. Knows no more than he has been told. So the endless repetition of the same answer in response to different questions. The government is no longer taking place in the person of the the head of government, any more than real journalism is being done by a newsreader. The real business is being conducted in boardrooms, and the less the public knows about any of that the better. So best if the head of government can keep a straight face as a result of ignorance.
Loose lips sink campaigns, careless talk costs votes.
Poor information costs democracy.
Alexander Pope said that 'Old politicians chew on wisdom past, and totter on in business to the last'. Come and see if old bloggers do too at The Watermelon Blog.