Television
is power, Ed Murrow right after all
Katie
Plourd
Television is an incredibly powerful medium, yet in this day and age it has
become a drastic waste of electricity. This downturn of television grows exponentially
with the surplus of reality television that has taken the spotlight.
One of the most influential TV reporters , Edward R. Murrow, addressed the
Radio-Television News Directors Association almost 50 years ago, giving insight
to the power of television. His insight is something Americans should take
into heavy consideration.
“
This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate and yes, it can even
inspire. But it can only do so to the extent that humans are determined to
use it towards those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box,” Murrow
said.
Murrow would roll over in his grave if he witnessed the trash on television
today.
An hour-long span of today’s TV programming could prove Murrow’s
theory right.
One commercial in particular caught my attention. It was for the TV show “Wife
Swap,” the hour-long fiasco in which an overweight family was deprived
of its accustomed junk food because their mother was replaced by a gymnastics
instructor who made them — God forbid — exercise.
Also, the team of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” will tackle
the project they’ve been dreaming about since last August by heading
to the Gulf Coast.
I love this show and hate it at the same time, but it isn’t because I’ve
never made it through an episode with dry eyes. “Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition” shows the true power TV has on an individual by tugging at every
emotion.
By portraying the rehabilitation of a single family, even if ABC re-built the
home of a hundred families, there is a message being portrayed that Katrina
survivors are making it out OK. This message is far from the truth.
Many places in the region have turned into ghost towns. Congress has yet to
approve the mass funding needed to resuscitate the area.
But leave it up to good American companies to come to the rescue. The government
may neglect thousands of homes from relief funds, but ABC and Sears are going
to do their civic duty and blow millions of dollars on one family.
In the same address, Murrow said as Americans, “We are currently wealthy,
fat, comfortable and complacent.
We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass
media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize
that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate
us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those
who work at it may see a totally different picture too late.”
Enough with what the people want. The media should give the people what they
need to see. In the case of the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast, a sugar-coated
Ty Pennington bearing rain boots to re-vamp one of the many destroyed homes
does not serve that purpose.
But hey, let’s kick back this Sunday with a bowl of popcorn and watch
ABC blow tons of money on a single family when there are multitudes of people
suffering.
Reality TV not only depicts what people wish reality truly is, but it skews
their perception. Life isn’t always a bowl of cherries, but what can
we do about it if we don’t know?
Depicting the realities of where our government fails may shock, alarm, sadden
and hopefully enrage those who are sheltered from its harsh reality. The benefit
would override such uncomfortable feelings.
Katie Plourd is a senior journalism major and the managing editor of the Daily
Forty-Niner.
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