Learn to think for yourself

Almost everybody complains about the mass media, but who does anything about them? Most people I've known who say they despise television still watch a lot of it. (I watch less than an hour per week.) People who are complacently cynical about Hollywood rarely watch anything Blockbuster doesn't stock in multiple copies. They do a little better, perhaps, with books, but it's hard to be sure around a university: whenever I see someone reading something interesting, it almost always turns out to be for a class.\nI get the impression what many people want is better service from the media. Audiences want the news, for example, to tell the truth they want to hear, about those things that interest them, with a bias that matches theirs so closely that they won't notice it as bias. The Internet has been marketed as a mass medium that can do this. If that is true, it still leaves us consumers of a mass-produced bias others have decided to feed us. \nMaybe what people want is parity of bias. Many liberals have expressed the wish for a sort of liberal Rush Limbaugh, someone who will think for them as Limbaugh professes to think for dittoheads. I think many gay people would welcome a pro-gay version of "Dr." Laura Schlessinger, who would field calls from homophobes and put them firmly, brutally, in their place.\nWell, fine, I suppose there's a market niche for something like that. Or for a gay version of "Friends" -- if Showtime's "Queer As Folk" (which might better be titled "Twinks in Heat") isn't providing that already. The pressure works in the other direction, too: the brilliant lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel does a remarkable job of coping with demands from her fans that she depict the entire range of lesbian life. But why should she have to do so? Why shouldn't someone else do a comic strip about (say) Republican, Southern Baptist lesbians who are into bondage and sex toys? We need more voices, not one voice forced to speak for everyone.\nPersonally, I see no reason why the mass media necessarily should cater to me: a left-wing, working-class, anti-religious gay man. The only reason they might want to is their corporate imperative to reach everyone, so that every knee shall bow to them, every mouth confess their dominion and every hand purchase the products of their advertisers.\nI don't mind watching Hollywood movies sometimes, since there are things Hollywood does well. I've even been known to read best-sellers, and to listen to music from major labels. Being low-class is a good reason to indulge in mass culture: it inspires such fury in would-be elitoids: they have strokes when they see you reading a Danielle Steele novel, and that makes the world a better place. But I also choose to support alternative media when I can, because my world would be poorer without them.\nI think it's in everyone's interest to limit their intake of commercial mass media as much as possible. For instance, as the media commercialize beauty, they standardize it so that only a very few people can be considered attractive at all. (It might be only a coincidence the mass media will largely own the rights to those few attractive people.) If watching TV makes you dissatisfied with the real people around you, turn off the TV.\nAlso, the more you watch, the less you know. Whether it's the dulled-down Disney version of Greek myths and Chinese legends, or CNN's version of the bombing of Baghdad by whichever American warlord is currently in office, the commercial media are not about informing you accurately. They are propaganda for corporations, government, or both -- and as the great maverick journalist I.F. Stone pointed out, all governments lie.\nThe opinion page is full of bias -- the columnists are expected to express their biases for the enjoyment or chagrin of our readers. But bias does not just extend to the opinion page -- the news pages aren't free of bias; it's just expressed in different ways, through what is not said instead of what is said. It's impossible to eliminate bias altogether. Your only defense is to examine a wider range of positions than you're likely to find in mainstream media -- which, returning to my original point, is something you must learn to do for yourself.