A Road Not Taken

Trey Smith

Cultures have rituals, and one of our most unique rituals is the Disaster Aftermath. A catastrophe hits, and we now expect a practiced and precise response: the interviews with survivors, the rhythmic press conferences at set daily times, the politicians preening for attention, the predictable partisan debates over alleged causes and supposed solutions. As the aftermath of the Aurora shooting shows in such hideous detail, this is America’s funereal requiem in the soul-sucking Information Age, a clichéd spectacle that substitutes screeching noise for some desperately needed silence.

This perverse banality, of course, often ends up disrespecting the dead and undermining the healing process by shoving real-life victims into the maws of the Political-Media Monster. It’s soul-sapping to watch, but, then, these post-atrocity atrocities do at least spotlight the ugly — and often baseless — assumptions that lurk in the shadows of our collective psyche.
~ from Muzzled by a Disaster by David Sirota ~

In 1988, I went back to college to finish up an undergraduate degree in Journalism (I already had a BA in Sociology). My plan was to become a newspaper reporter. Despite the fact that I served as the Assistant Editor of The Oregon PeaceWorker for a good many years, I never really put my journalism degree to professional use. The program at Arkansas Tech University helped me to become a better writer as well as helped to boost my confidence in myself a great deal, but those are the sole benefits I received for this portion of my college education.

The primary reason that a journalism career turned into a road not taken by me has to do with the maw Sirota mentions above. The very idea of foisting myself into the lives of the grieving by trying to cajole them to expose their frayed nerves and respectability before the media spotlight simply didn't sit well with me. It caused me to look at the profession with a fresh set of eyes and what I saw disgusted me.

In the media biz, sensationalism sells and what can be more sensational than tapping into the pain and agony family members feel when a loved one a) is murdered, b) maimed or c) responsible for the deaths and maimings of others? In such situations, privacy doesn't exist. The job of today's journalist is to force yourself into the grieving process and to leave no stone unturned. The rawer the emotions you can expose, the better.

Why do you think the all-news stations like CNN pray for calamity and disaster? The events that shock and dismay us are their bread-and-butter. They latch onto these events and turn them into spectacles, providing around-the-clock coverage of every wild theory and assumption. They actually feed the hysteria because it means more viewers and more viewers mean bigger ad dollars and more profits.

When I was a young lad, I had a romanticized view of the intrepid journalist. By the time I had finished my degree program in journalism, I had completely lost my naivete. While I still consider my journalism degree valuable for my own personal journey, it became clear to me that the journalistic road would be one I would not take.