The information gap

When something - a new law being passed, a natural or man-made catastrophe, an important recall of a commercial product - happens, we can expect our major news outlets to report on them, allowing us to be "in the know". Right? Unfortunately, this is the grand ol' US of A, and we're not so lucky.

Upon deciding to venture to New Orleans, I had the great fortune of stopping by my local Chase branch to sign my financial life away. Making conversation with my new financial mastermind, I alerted him to the fact, shocking as it may seem, that New Orleans is, two-and-a-half years after the storm, still in trouble, to put it gently. This story is not a unique one among my fellow volunteers. The fact remains that a large percentage of Americans do not realize that the people and the city of New Orleans are no where near to being back or rebuilt. This can be attributed to many factors, the most important of which (and which just so happens to be the focus of this here blog entry) being that the national /local news outlets - your CNNs, Fox News', USA Todays, the Daily News' - don't put a high priority on the truth as it exists in our fair lands. Rather than reporting on how f-ed up everything from the government, to the special interests, and even the plight of the middle-class home-owners, both here in New Orleans and nationwide, they feel that people (anonymous viewers to simply further ratings) should know about the latest black man wanted for a crime he didn't commit, or the cat who jumped through rings of fire, or how many times Britney Spears flashed her nether-regions this past weekend. You know, the truly life-changing, important stuff.

What we, in our media-driven country, need is a greater accountability of those which provide us with the information they decide is necessary. They have to stop deciding what we THINK we should know and start telling us what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. The good, the bad, the kind of stuff that may make their advertisers/backers/supported candidates look bad. There needs to be some independence and objectivity. Heck, the world press has been a better disseminator of Common Ground/New Orleans news than our national press. And we're separated not just by state boundaries but by a huge freakin' ocean! It's time to bring the news, in a country founded on the premise of "by the people for the people", back to the people.