How do we raise the public appetite for "healthy" public information?

 Could there be a more cogent moment in history to recall a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. Although the quote generates and is predicated upon different kinds of minds, the topics pursued by each kind, in her view, are on open display every day and every hour these days? And the differences may help to explain some of the “social” divide that currently plagues many parts of the world.

A more than cursory glance into the depth of Mrs. Roosevelt’s insight might also offer a ray of light and insight, perhaps ever an AHA moment for those deeply steeped in the profits of both tabloids and conspiracy theories. An insight, hopefully, that might help to turn their gaze away from the torment their gaze and their convictions are leading.

So, what exactly did the former First Lady say, in words that would qualify as politically incorrect today:

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Gossip that fills the tabloids, and the right-wing extreme media, along with the entertainment outlets, both print and digital, has a ready and growing appetite among a large segment of the population. And, even for just putting my fingers on those keys, I can hear their loud cries of “snob” and “self-declared elite,” and “coastal liberal” and “gun activist” and “tree-hugger” and “baby murderer” and all of the many other epithets they prefer to lob like grenades into the corridors of academia, the boardrooms of giant corporations, the sanctuaries of cathedrals, mosques and synagogues, and into the hearts and minds of vulnerable people whose world view is founded on the basic principle that all of those who have succeeded through academic pursuit, or through corporate or ecclesial hierarchies, or through the vicissitudes of climbing from the4 ghettos of our towns and cities into some degree of prominence are somehow deeply embedded in a venal plot of child abduction, paedophilia and whatever other heinous attributes and activities can imagine, necessitating a messiah, a savour to rescue the world from their clutches.

While it is indisputable that many of the great works of literature develop their characters in highly complex and sophisticated details, through both inner and outer monologues, in and through complex conflicted circumstances, often with a core piece of morality, their characters also express complex, and also sophisticated ideas about significant questions on the meaning and purpose of human existence. And while it is also indisputable that movies and television shows, as well as “drug-store” novels are replete with superficial cut-outs of characters so reduced in dimension and complexity that they become caricatures of more interesting people, and all of those productions have garnered a large audience throughout history, let us not forget that Shakespeare’s plays were written for the crown in the pit, whose mere penny afforded them admission. It is not that the ‘crowd’ is either ignorant or unsophisticated, dumb or dumber, nor is the crowd incapable of comprehending even the most subtle of ideas.

However, the production of such popular pieces of entertainment and media depend on a different kind of discipline. Immediate interviews of others, newspaper headlines, police radio frequencies, ambulance radio reports, and of course the newest instrument of entertainment “stories” the internet, especially the deep dark internet where the very worst of humanity find both refuge and anonymity. Dew worm pickers are, late at night, busily scouring lawns for their prospective harvest of bait for the fishers whose cash they expect to pocket in the morning. Perhaps it is a fitting metaphor for much of what passes as tabloid, sensationalist and person-and- personality-centred menus that lure the public appetite. Short term work for immediate cash.

Occasionally, as in The West Wing, or many of the other reputable and challenging pieces of art and literature, we find a story about people who can simply never be reduced to a cardboard cut-out of themselves, either in person, or in the public mind.

Or course, the public appetite for “information” and community connectedness is not restricted to stories about the private lives of individuals, many of whom have sought notoriety in their own need for attention. Events, especially those events which arouse a public curiosity, include things like explosions, fires, shootings, robberies, rapes, drug-gangland killings, and the occasional incident and hero who escapes or who rescues another from the jaws of crime, comprise much of the “news” that, for some is not fit to print, (borrowing from the New York Times slogan) are also important in their jelling into a community culture. Occasionally, a public figure’s moral-fatality will also serve as a magnet for public consumption, and thereby sales of media and advertising that keep the media itself afloat. Scurrilous, scandalous, reprehensible and deplorable behaviour, stemming from attitudes and beliefs that, too, are reprehensible and deplorable, serves as a fast-food menu to a public appetite for instant and instantly processed mindfood. Trouble is, just like most other ‘fast food,’ there is little if any real nourishment, but lots of sugar, salt and cholesterol in the diet.

Personal conflicts among public figures are especially magnetic to many news reporters of even the most serious and responsible outlets. They know, as their editors can and will attest, that such stories serve as fresh honey to “starved” scavengers, whether those scavengers are dressed in double-breasted blue suits or coveralls, or delivery uniforms. There are millions of opportunities to feed what seems to be an insatiable appetite for stories about the “fall” of others especially from high places, demonstrating a human trait of “demonizing” that helps to fuel the appetite for such stories.

Passing from personalities and events to “ideas” in a corporate culture that has been fed sawdust from birth, however, presents a battle so complex and so unprofitable, from a business and political perspective, that, only the short epithet “KISS” seems to operate among even the top executives and political operatives and the public relations guru’s that puppet/support them. Specialized pages, magazines, television and internet streaming channels, albeit, have been designed and produced for the benefit of a small “niche’ audience, the profits from which ventures hardly gain even the notice of venture capitalists. Occasionally, and this is one of the best examples of a national “public” media, financed by the state, dedicates a regular, predictable and sustainable slot in its viewing listings….as does the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Nature of Things with David Suzuki as host, now running for well over forty years, depicting new scientific research into all manner of subjects, gathering research from around the world, and then feeding it to a Canadian audience comprised of several generations.

Occasionally, too, embedded in a nightly newscast, one finds a 90-second piece about some astrological, or anatomical, or archeological, or even medical discovery, included in the news line-up both to enhance the audience’s breadth of knowledge and also to demonstrate the breadth of ‘coverage’ that only a public broadcaster can and will do. (Perhaps to generate funding support among decision-makers in the national government.

Nevertheless, ideas, the charted course of lives of those seeking more challenging files with which to wrestle, and the preferred ‘consumer’ menu of those who find ‘gossip’ and ‘ambulances chasing car wrecks, or oligarchic coups, (or threatened coups, by michael flynn and trump attorney powell) distasteful, insulting, patronizing, condescending, or outright disgusting are too often relegated to the editorial pages, the academic journals, the specialized publications of various specialty investigations.

Fifteen years as a free-lance, untrained journalist, recovering from the repeated epithet of news directors, “the audience/reader has only a sixth grade education” (so make the story intelligible to that person), I really never ‘fit’ into that straight jacket. Neither did I accept the other straight jacket that “headlines” (even if they are misleading) are essential to attract busy readers/ ’listeners…Thereby inevitable and compulsively contributing to the ‘sensationalising” of the way news is reported, in addition to the subjects considered appropriate for a select audience.

Of course, social media has a very significant role to play in the dumbing down of public information, its consumption, and therefore its interpretation, by a 40% segment of the population (in the U.S.) that gets its news from social media.

Little wonder that there are conspiracy theories running amok, among those whose diet of public information is not only empty of real debatable and demonstrable information, but is also replete with the most vile opinions of all castes. What must the average “grade level” of intelligence/learning/training be now….grade 3?

It is not a dumbing down of public information that we need, in spite of the editorial and executive need and commitment to generate profits. It is, rather, an elevation of the kind of news, and the language of the public media, including those niche sites and information outlets, and a much more targeted and creative approach to advertising revenue. Subscriptions to The Atlantic, have, fortunately grown as have those to The New Yorker. Nevertheless, newsrooms of highly respected and honourable newspapers have been hollowed out, with the numbers of foreign reporters depleted by large numbers. Costs, and declining revenues, are alleged to be the cost. However, there are small ‘green’sprouts of investigative reports like CNN’s Global Public Square, and MSNBC’s Richard Engel’s deep dives into various issues including the recent Israeli-Palestine 11-day war that continue to offer those interestered and those advertisers still committed, packages well worth both the effort of the hosts and producers, and of the audiences.

The convergence of academic/deep thinkers and their valuable and relevant insights with a world facing multiple crises, with a series of media outlets, at a time when institutions, including academia, are so distrusted, seems both a threat and an opportunity.

First, those engaged in the preparation of public statements from ‘think tanks’ of all kinds need to step up their production of material, not only to the niche publications, but also to the mega-media outlets. And those same outlets need to rethink the public’s need for (if not their appetite for, unless and until it can be nurtured and fostered) the brightest and the best ideas that we have access to and reliability upon. (Churchill would be appalled with my ending that sentence with a preposition!)

Education, not restricted to t he formal classrooms of elementary and secondary schools, nor even to the hallowed halls of high education, is the birthright not only of all women on the planet, including girls of all ages in all countries. It is also the birthright of those living in the ghettoes of our cities. Perhaps it is time for those charged with leadership of the various media outlets to rethink the parameters of their business, to embrace the obligation of educating, not merely of attracting readers and consumers, as part of their public trust and commitment.

After all, the higher the level of national and community literacy, the greater the likelihood that conspiracy theories like Q-Anon, and those evangelical fantasies of salvation and an eternal life among streets paved with gold (a precurser to many of those people who have become vulnerable to such conspiracy theories, and hoax presidencies like that of the last American president) will have places to become embedded.

A national garden of questioning, informed, authentic and nurtured individuals whose minds and hearts and spirits have been fed a diet of science, principled theology, collaborative and participatory and effectively functioning democracy and a healthy scepticism (a core ingredient of a healthy and disciplined formal and informal education) is not a hothouse in which even the seeds of conspiracy and propaganda, and political and profiteering seduction can take root.

This is not rocket-science. It is common sense, an essential ingredient on which a healthy community relies as its metaphoric oxygen.

It is not enough, or even appropriate, for ordinary citizens to go running to the local, or provincial or national politicians with cries like, “What are YOU going to do about this mess?” Not only did that politician “create” the specific mess in question, but  the root causes of any given mess go back to several layers of causes, including people and systems that might have failed.

One of the prime reasons for such failure is the cynical, uninformed insouciance and “blaming” that seems to be the chosen rhetoric for public debate. Citizens are neither stupid nor are they deliberately, in most cases, blocked from accessing legitimate and needed information. It could well be that the former responsible and mature and publicly-focused media agencies have also lost their previously charted course.

Profit is not a worthy idol to worship, no matter the sycophant seeking its embrace.