Chasing Ambulances

Everyone indulges in this chasing, and it is particularly pathetic to think about the information which is being forgotten or delayed in order to sensationalize the latest thing. It isn't that we don't have problems to solve, but they are not sexy, don't have the uumph, might require more thought. Even NPR is indulgent here, including the bumping of important programs to accommodate the marriage, for example.

The entertainment factor in all of this is huge, and largely unexamined, except for those who are doing the manipulation. It seems that it would behoove education on all levels to up the ante on courses on mass communications and manipulation. This was of high interest in the sixties, and I well remember putting a course together on it for library school students in Buffalo, N.Y. Marshall McLuhan was the rage, leading the way to the taking apart of media. I have a feeling that our library school was one of the first to focus on this.

Who are the present "gurus" of mass communications, and what is their take on things such as corporate conglomerates dominating the news? What would be their stance on the complicity of the Supreme Court in the issues of who owns what on the "airwaves?" We are entering a new never never land in both communications technology and the avenues which are used and abused. With the squeeze on funding imposed by legislatures of all kinds, even public media seems to be falling into fund raising deals with those who would possibility limit the effectiveness of its heretofore independence.