Jon Stewart recently poked fun at the media for acting like the democratic party is, well, dead and buried. He noted that the media used language identical to the language used two years ago when the democrats were the big winners and the republicans were, well, dead and buried. This “either or” binary media philosophy is really great for selling commercial space, but does little to explain the nuance and intricacies of life. Worse still, it creates an environment that victimizes people by pulling their situations out of context and placing those people into reference groups that also destroy the context of whatever acts/events the individual is being persecuted for.
I’m speaking about the infamous Vikings RB now.
AP plead out to a lesser crime over a situation that many deemed to be child abuse, but everyone questioned from that cultural area (Texas) believed was not child abuse. Contextually, I don’t see what happened as child abuse. That’s just my opinion. Legally, it was deemed not to be a child abuse charge–at least not one that the prosecutors thought they could win. Still, Peterson has not been reinstated. Why? The team isn’t sure how it will look.
In reality the team isn’t sure what story the media will tell. Now I can tell you from watching these types of binary stories that the media will say whatever they think the audience is tipped towards. Case and point, at the beginning of the Jets game I am watching as I type, the Jets were a broken team with no hope or desire to win in the locker room. As the J-E-T-S jumped out to an early 10 point lead and suddenly forced a turnover deep in PIT territory, the same announcer had the gaul to say that in the production meetings he felt the excitement building among the Jets in expectation of a win and a turnaround.
The media is a lie. The media is the lie they think you want to hear.