News Media – Susan X Jane

Coffee and Collapse

These last few months we have seen enormous erosion in the stability of our democracy as we descend into a roiling pit of racism and division ahead of the true start of the 2020 presidential campaign. I bought a coffee maker! This isn’t the first time I have used a little retail therapy to soothe emotional distress—you know how it goes, bad day, buy a cupcake, rough work news? New shoes. For the current constitutional crisis, I thought a coffee pot would be just the ticket.

I must admit, for a while, I just stopped watching the unfolding of our contemporary apocalypse. My eyes hurt, my brain hurt, and most of all, my heart was broken each day. Unlike the news cycle that washes itself clean with the next big story, I was unable to forget the horrors of yesterday, last week, last year. Kids in cages, killer cops, deregulation, tax breaks for the wealthy, racist attacks, white nationalism. When reporting moves on, these situations continue to explode like strings of landmines left behind. Years after the Black Lives Matter movement’s moment has ceased to command top news status, cops that killed citizens are exonerated and justice is denied for the families and communities that have fought the respectable way through a justice system stacked against them. Boom. Gone are the riots in the streets and the mask-wearing protesters, gone the swing of national attention and concern. Buried under the fold, at the bottom of the hour, a few sentences, a few seconds about the exonerated taking a badge again, a second of dog-eared sympathy barely mustering a sigh before launching into celebrity news—Beyonce in Lion King—amazing!

News wasn’t just depressing to watch, it felt like a daily push down a slippery slope. I felt less informed when I watched, felt like I was being spoon-fed just the hot sauce, just the frosting—the hot takes, shady snaps, and sweet endings that drive the most click-worthy content. Sure Trump is the master of distraction, but the opinion panels assembled to opine hours a day feed on the distraction even in their outrage. Like clockwork, Trump tweets outrageous bullshit Saturday evening, setting up the red herring all the Sunday shows will chase. The week is spent tweeting and subtweeting both on twitter and around the water cooler. We all compete for the hottest take, the sweetest rebuttal, and the most coveted prize of all—the best meme.

So time for a new morning ritual, one removed from the problems of the day. My coffee maker is small: I enjoy drinking coffee, but more than two or three cups a day has my heart racing like a racist Trump tweet. I figure I can save the environment by cutting back on styrofoam Dunk’s cups and straws. I pull a huge bag of beans out of the cabinet—super cheap due to the collapsing coffee market: what a bargain! Plus the ritual of grinding and making the coffee is a more soothing way to start the day than the latest headline about the crisis at the border. I have a small coffee grinder. It drowns out the sound of a Morning Joe segment on record heat waves. The coffee only takes a moment to brew, one Round-Up weed killer ad, one for pickup trucks. Coffee’s ready! Environment saved, I click on the a/c and hit my writing room.

I have a hard time writing about our current state of affairs without lapsing into hyperbole or tottering into fiction. I doubt my own understanding of what is happening on any given day. We’ve slid so far into the simulacrum that reality is not only relative but sometimes not even relevant. Multiple civil rights movements compete for headline space while the patriarchal white supremacy propaganda machine pumps out another generations’ worth of ignorance. Lost in the fog of our information war are the glacial gears grinding us all—capitalism, environmental collapse, technological determinism and a religious adherence to me-over-you on a tiny rock where it’s going to be all of us or none of us.

There is no neutral these days, though. Choosing sides is easy—drop into a social media circle where an algorithm feeds you only the kind of information you like. Not choosing is choosing too, to look away from what America is just now waking up to (again) is to sing its favorite lullaby. In every generation of America’s short life, black and brown people have battled to be free to live the American creed of equality and justice for all, and in every generation, the powerful machine of white supremacy that manufactured America has refused to produce a more equitable country. I am only the latest in a long line of people for whom this battle has always been, for whom it is always personal. So no there is no choosing, and no losing myself in endless self-care at the expense of my own responsibility to be informed.

I spend cup one pouring over the latest on the reparations debate. Some can barely understand why we should care about a debt so old and potentially overwhelming—in a country where millions are drowning in their own debt, the failure to flicker an eyebrow at life long debt seems not so out of pocket. Besides, how can we enjoy our best life if we’re always attending to the crushing debt we ignore like so many melting ice caps? Besides, no slave owner still lives. Though corporations—who of course are people per Citizen’s United, and in our hearts where our [brand] loyalty lies—that benefited from slavery can and do live on, fueled by the blood money of millions kidnapped and killed in the fields of early American capitalism. Banking and insurance industries, shipping and trade found their foundations of success in trading humans. Some of those companies still exist, their books intact with the transactions that sold people like so many cattle plainly marked in fading ink. While individuals slave owners may be dead their capital lives one; trade of people created pools of generational wealth still tapped into today.

I like my coffee sweet, so today I, too, enjoy my legacy from the slave trade. Sugar, like another early staple cotton, fueled a boom so big it built the richest nation in the history of the world. On the one hand, it seems ludicrous that a product as prolific as sugar would be the basis of so insidious a trade, and yet it was because this trade was so prolific that sugar is the sweeter that sits on every countertop. Four hundred years ago only the rich could afford what was an exotic sweetener newly arrived on the tables of Europe. Now sugar is in practically every edible product but salt. Perhaps it is fitting then that America struggles with an obesity epidemic as we keep feeding on the fruit of our most toxic tree.

Cup two and it’s on to news of massive ICE arrests just days after a domestic terrorist targeted Latinos first in his manifesto using words borrowed from a Trump stump speech and later with bullets in a Walmart as parents and kids shopped for bulletproof backpacks and crayons for back-to-school. Crying children are left homeless and parentless, registering a weak tick on the sympathy chart. Kids in cages, kids shot by police, kids molested, kids shot in school. Showing sympathy for kids being crushed by the systems we adults create and execute is becoming a full-time job. Better to turn the page, perhaps another cup. Good coffee, grown in Guatemala. The picture on the package shows green mountains—with no sign of the struggle so many are seeking asylum from—must be lovely this time of year!

Cup three is always a push, leaves me feeling a bit jumpy—too aware of all that I need to ignore to get through a workday. But it tastes so good I drain the cup, feeling myself tilt like a patron on a sinking ship. Is it the coffee or is the world tilting? At the back of my mind the strains of nearer my god to thee sound a titanic tune for going down. From my precarious perch on the edge of cup three, I can see too much. I watch a week of mass shooting coverage like I am reading tarot cards.

I notice the newscasters’ eyes shine where the breaking news is hot and fresh. Wolf Blitzer appeared suited and booted in CNN’s headquarters in under an hour of the El Paso shooting, claiming the news desk from the second-string Saturday anchor to get that juicy coverage airtime. Twenty-four hours after the El Paso shooting, bodies still lay in the aisles of Walmart but we had already moved past them to take up familiar positions: gun control, mental health, Trump, Trump, Trump.

There is a breathless excitement at the traumas of the day. There is little information beyond soundbites—many newsrooms were long ago gutted by cutbacks and media consolidation. Each news story is a sip of bitter and sweet, hits of content like a drip of a drug where the high has long been replaced by addiction to the ride itself—shock and horror, followed by thoughts and prayers topped with a dose of the viral good vibe of the day to keep you coming back. Delicious! A little sugar has always sweetened this country’s bitterest chapters.

We are too busy turning our crumbling world into killer content to think clearly about what is happening. We are deconstructing reality to build the inter-webs of our fantasies with nary a glance at what we are becoming. There are too many likes to be had to do the boring grunt work in, say, door-knocking or book-reading, or critical thinking. I see the crisis clearly—headlines and think pieces abound for you to see too, in case you haven’t heard of our imminent collapse. And yet I feel deeply the chasm between the world we are narrating and the world we live in. Like you, I wring my hands and wonder what can we do; I try not to focus too much on Trump, on the individual slights…but I like my steak in the matrix, too.

Even as I write these words I sip on the seeds that planted all this catastrophe. My coffee and sugar, my SUV and my lawn care, my a/c and my social media rants—my life is not separate from the systems that are wreaking havoc on our nation. It is easy to focus on where the news cycle tells us to, but harder to acknowledge the ways the fabric of our own life is used to build the world. It’s not just the leader of the legislature it is all the ways that we structure power. The world created by those structures gave rise to what we see now. It is in our daily rituals, our common habits, snaking throughout our whole culture.

One day if all continues, Trump won’t be president, and we will still be America, addicted to consumption and clinging to our sacred individuality. No tweet-able position will right this ship, only a return, a rethinking, and rebuilding can make us seaworthy enough to travel towards our better stars. Beyond the clickbait is a longer and more difficult conversation about who were are to become that we need to have. We don’t have to wait for things to get better—or worse, more likely—before we begin in our own sphere of influence, wherever that is, to build a new world

Let’s practice every day. Let’s talk outside of talking points. Let’s think and read and learn beyond the story of the day. You have a responsibility to be informed about the world you live in and the impact your choices can have in that world. You can do that with the same internet connection that brings you our beloved memes. You can do that today, wherever you are, and talk about what you learn with whoever you see.

Let’s think about what really matters—and live our lives that way. Just because our country is out of whack that’s no excuse to throw your own code to the wind. Make connections between your own behavior and the systems we seek to change. Act in ways that align with your beliefs. Do what you are good at—knit for resistance or bike to end hunger—to encourage others to do the same

Let’s get real about the problems of our nation and let’s bear careful witnesses to the daily injustices so that we may stop them. Let’s call a thing a thing and stop letting the propaganda machine redefine what it means to be free. Stop checking out and show up. Talk, donate, act, join, walk, shelter, feed, and manufacture with your words and deeds a reality that we might live in a world that is more than a house of cards against the wind.

I’m off the sugar. I’m paying attention. I am writing this to me as much as to you. This is a daily practice. This is a grueling workout. Yes, it will wear you out but I’m here to tell you that you—yes, you— are alive at this moment for this very purpose.

If you read this far, you are a champ! Thank you! -sxj

The Optics of Oppression

Kids in cages. “Tender age facilities.” Baby prisons. A chorus of wailing children ‘in need of a conductor.’ This week on American Apocalypse, Trump’s disastrous zero-tolerance immigration policy separated families at the southern U.S. border, resulting in thousands of minors, including babies and toddlers, incarcerated in immigration detention centers. Just days later Trump ends the practice, not because he felt it was wrong but because he said he didn’t like the way it looked or felt. It was the optics that forced the reversal.

And why shouldn’t they? Children were drowning in a sea of mylar blankets, kenneled in dog cages. Babies weeping as their mothers are taken from them. The above image was ground zero of the outrage over zero tolerance. The detention of people crossing the southern border is not new, nor did these childhood detention centers pop up overnight, but the images were too arresting to allow people to ignore the problem. Optics-fueled outrage forced the President to issue a new executive order–and also prompted the government to tighten down the flow of images of detained asylum seekers.

In the battle for the soul of America, optics are the primary weapon. We are a culture obsessed with the image, so what we see determines much of what we think and where we direct our energy. Our media environment relies heavily on images–clickbait and real news sites alike use arresting images to capture readers attention in fast-moving social media streams. With the crush of information that we stagger under every day, only the image that shocks can cut through. The undeniably real and awful reaches straight into our lizard brain, stopping us in our stupor. Despite the constant obfuscation of our political and cultural climate, we are still human, and that human within us can be activated by the egregious.

So the image of a crying girl and kids in cages galvanized a nation into a moment of wokefulness. Even Republicans agreed that keeping kids in cages without their parents is wrong, and they pushed for a bill that would reunite kids with their parents in cages in indefinite incarceration–this way everyone is happy: cage manufacturers, tent city wardens, and virulently racist Trump supporters rejoice! In the land of optics, the devil is in the details. What seems like relief is little more than a nod to public outrage. Families can now be detained indefinitely, internment camps look more and more like those that held Japanese-Americans, and control tightened on images of the continuing crisis.

Image result for japanese internment camp us border — Japanese Interment Camp

Image result for immigration tent city — CPB Detention center

The federal government is limiting access to the shelters and keeping reporters and senators alike from being able to witness or share the conditions of the ~~immigration detention facilities~~ baby jails. Melani’s staged camp tour was more propaganda in a week heavy with it, the illusion of information. Yes, even now that the order has been signed. While many of us were horrified by the images of kids in cages, few of us are aware that these few images from inside the detention centers were released to news organizations for use by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and are not first-hand images collected by journalists and other witnesses during short observation visits. By contrast, the Pro Publica audio tape of wailing children was not a piece of government content, showing that actual conditions were more stressful and traumatizing that the sanitized images of children lining up and sterile tents.

The American public can be swayed by dramatic and horrific images. The Vietnam War is an instructive example. During the war, the advent of color television and meals in aluminum that make for easy reheating combined meant many people spent dinnertime watching the evening news. Each night Americans choked down the death count of American soldiers and the carnage of the war along with their TV dinner. This exposure to the horrors of war in full color became indigestible to the public, and narratives of glory soon turned to clamor to end the war, especially after the Tet offensive. As the optics soured and criticism grew, support for ongoing resources dwindled and political support evaporated.

The federal government learned from this loss to optics, weaponized for the new medium of color TV. A tacit adherence to government policy by news agencies emerged: out of respect for the families, news agencies would not run images of returning soldiers coffins. While its true such images could be upsetting to family members, it is also true that images of returning soldiers caskets dulled the public’s taste for war, making it hard to get the support needed to invade say, Kuwait, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.

The suppression of images of war was managed by the U.S. government by allowing some reporters controlled access–remember embedded reporters? This relationship between journalists and the military meant that there was lots of amazing and important footage from within the war zone, but always with a handler, a filter–a censor. When servicemen were tortured and killed in Fallujah, debate raged whether to run the horrific images of the mutilated bodies. When a reporter published graphic images of American dead, he was barred from the field. There were consequences for journalists and outlets who chose show images the government didn’t want to be seen.

There are consequences now for journalists who question the Trump administration in this undeclared immigration war. We have watched over the last two years as the administration eats away at the free press, shutting out those who disagree, openly disrespecting the press in rabid rallies and press conferences alike, barring journalists from taking images of asylum-seeking babies in kennels on the border. The government has gotten smarter–they control their media as carefully as a Kardashian.

We can talk ourselves out of anything with words. All of the horrors of history from war to holocausts happened in real time to millions of people who had to make sense of it. People went about their daily life eating and pooping and living while others were sold as property, captured and tortured, packed on to trains or locked up in baby prisons. We can read what they thought or said, but the images still stand as a testament that they should have been able to see right from wrong in front of their eyes.

In the age of information, the only image that can’t go viral is the one you can’t take. The only atrocity you can get away with is the one that you hide. It is exhausting to be the ones to bear witness in these times, but make no mistake your witnessing matters. Like Schrodinger’s cat, it is the power of the observer that brings the cat to life–or not. Every horror that can befall a human can go on unchecked when we look away, all possible oppressions can happen when we refuse to watch. As long as we watch, optics will be the weapon of our civil war. As long as we support those who hunt for these images, we will have the ammunition we need to stand up and say no. Donate to those fighting still to reunify families, pause for a second to rest your weary eyes, and stay ready to bear witness as resistance.

Trump’s Okey-Doke-Rope-A-Dope

Oops, he did it again. Trump’s got the country so riled up about the NFL’s knees and elbows that there’s barely enough time in the day to focus on the humanitarian crisis exploding in Puerto Rico, looming threats of nuclear War with North Korea, 181 arrests during healthcare hearings, and a bunch of White House staffers using personal accounts for their damn emails. Remember when you were just sick of hearing about the emails? Good times.

Today’s media environment runs through your life like a freight train: demanding your attention for constantly breaking news, requiring your studious use of social media so you can keep up on the latest viral videos. Keeping up with it all is exhausting. Ignoring the media barking for your attention means you might miss any one of these majorly important stories altogether. Damned if you do try to keep up, ignorantly awaiting the imminent apocalypse if you don’t pay attention. Trump expertly leverages our inability to look away to control the news cycle and the national narrative.

Trump treats his captive audience like hostages, terrorizing us at regular intervals to keep our attention, threatening one of us–Black athletes–or another–Dreamers–to signal his dominance and to keep the fearful quiet. He exhausts us with his diatribes. He robs us of sleep with his late-night tweeting. He holds the gun of patriotism to our heads when we ask for justice. He won’t let us take a bathroom break.

Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, you cannot deny that he is well aware of how to manipulate media to get attention. He rode a wave of crazy talk all the way into the White House. Now camped out in the Oval Office, he continues to command the news cycle any day he chooses with the stroke of 140 characters. He is a car accident that we can’t look away from, even though our rubber-necking is slowing down the flow of critical and timely stories that require both attention and action.

Trump is using racism to whip up his base and wipe out his critics. The thing that makes this trap exceptionally difficult to avoid is that the stories he stokes the news cycle with are important–NFL protests about racial justice(not the free speech issue that is not at the center of the protests, no matter what he tells you), DACA, Charlottesville. These are critical and complex issues that deserve all our attention. Here’s the trick, Trump has no intention of offering solutions or real dialogue on any of these issues. While he has people of good conscience dancing around the ring trying to explain racial justice to the unwilling he skulks out of the spotlight. Nothing gets accomplished but making more anger, and then he hits us with another tweet. War with North Korea, bam. Repeal healthcare, pow. Before you know it you’re leaning against the ropes and the ref is counting you out.

So be prepared for the next round of stories fighting for headlines. Avoid Trump’s okey-doke-rope-a-dope. Remember that climate change, international diplomacy, and democratic integrity are the prize to keep your eyes on. Even when you’re watching the top story, ask yourself ‘is there something important I’m not hearing about’? Be careful to avoid fights that are designed to distract you, not engage you. Keep your chin tucked. Protect your neck. And always, stay woke.

Why Can’t We All Get Along?

In 2004 an idealistic young State Senator from Illinois assured us that we were not red states and blue sates, but the united stated of America. It seems like since that time sates are getting redder and blue-er each year. Whatever side of the isle you’re on, chances are you are getting a healthy diet of haterade for your political opposites.

Its hard to evaluate the tone of political discourse and lay blame at anyones feet without looking at the media environment that feeds on and fires up a politically hostile climate.

Decades ago, news reporting relied on–wait for it–reporters and reporting. Networks maintained large bureaus of news reporters: trained journalist paid to chase down and thoroughly vet news stories for nightly and morning news casts. A steady erosion of actual journalists coupled with more and more hours of news shows to fill has resulted in a crisis in news. The result? shallow reporting, an increased reliance on pundits and “experts” and recycled, regurgitated stories taken from video press releases, company marketing material and tabloid stories.

Imagine you’re a news network exec and you have, oh say, 24 hours to fill without letting your foot off the pedal for viewers and driving them to change the channel. What to do? Fluff it up with newstainment–stories with exciting video or salacious stories, but low news value and useless information. The clutter of viral videos and celeb worship make it more difficult to find out what matters, and encourages a gossip culture that extends beyond Justin Bieber into the political arena in search of the next scandal.

In a race for ratings, political coverage has become increasingly inflammatory, amounting at times to little more than a bad internet forum. Outrageous factual misrepresentation is rampant with truth falling victim to sensational headlines. Without fact checking, many viewers are left not only uninformed–but ill informed. A recent study found that regular viewers of Fox news are more likely to be less informed than people who do not watch the news at all.

So tonight’s State of the Union speech and the response from no less than 5 republican rebutters is sure to fill tomorrow’s airwaves with plenty of verbal vitriol and heated debate. In the middle of it, we could really do with some seasoned, reasoned analysis of the very real problems our country faces. We need facts, not talking points. We need compassionate consideration of how to make America better for everyone not tweets going for red meat.

While you’re looking to see who’s tearing the country in half, just don’t look across the isle, take a careful look at the messengers of doom. Demand better news from your sources. Write them letters, tweet their factual finessing, and call them out till we can get the news we need.