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Columnists
Sustainability
and Sustainable Development
Nicholas
R. Hild, PhD Professor ASU
Polytechnic
Nicholas
R. Hild, PhD., Professor, Environmental Technology Management, Arizona
State University College of Technology and Innovation, has extensive
experience in Environmental Management in the southwestern U.S. Dr. Hild
can be reached at 480-727-1309 and by email at DrNick@asu.edu.
"...The
news is what I say it is ..."
David Brinkly, News Anchor, NBC (1965)
Aug/Sept
2008
Television,
the vast wasteland we love to hate, drives me crazy! And, its not just
the prime-time so-called situation comedies that light my fuse, either.
TV, in general, has gotten so bad that, even when you want to hear a
little news, you have to sit through 20 minutes of commercials, just to
listen to 10 minutes of "real" news, only to realize
afterwards that at least part of that "real" news was
about some starlet going to rehab (or not) and how American Idol was
seeking ways to become a "reality" survivor show—its enough
to make you swear off TV!
And, I really love those ‘news’-casters’
telling us what they are going to show us in the next exciting segment
(right after the break), only to cut to another commercial break which
is just another advertisement of the very same news program and talking
heads you are watching…what’s up with that? Don’t they
think we already know which news channel we’re watching?
With this remote-button-driven
society we live in, do those news programs need to keep informing us
that they are the ‘best’ for "live, late-breaking,
investigative…whatever…" while showing footage of
the very talking-heads we were just watching? That 30 seconds could have
been more effectively used to give us some real news! Do
the program genius writers/promoters really think we won’t hit that
remote button anyway, instead of watching the commercial that follows?
What got me thinking about this
was all the programming that led up to the Super Bowl, much of which was
done right on those local evening news programs in the name of telling
us the latest "news"—(well, hey, after all, the Superbowl
was in Glendale, AZ—isn’t that ‘local’ news??)— like, which
parties with which celebs were going to be scheduled where—evidently,
that was the local "news" that mattered most that week because
it filled at least 15 minutes of the allotted 20 minutes available in
every network station’s half-hour broadcast.
But, my rant isn’t about news
programs themselves. No, it’s much more than that. My rant is really
about what we are NOT getting on the news (or anywhere on
TV, regularly).
The American public is NOT
getting the biggest news story of the new millennium. We aren’t also
getting information on why and how we’ve come to be in a crisis
situation that everyone should be concerned about. The future of
the biosphere and all its inhabitants hangs in the balance, and nowhere
do we get this "news" (except in occasional ‘special’
programming aired opposite a reality show during prime-time—guess
which one Joe Sixpack and his family watch?).
By this point in time, you would
think that the long term environmental impact of greenhouse gases on the
entire world would be updated in every news program, just like the
sports and weather. The potential impact on quality of life as we know
it and the progress being made toward reducing carbon in the environment
should be "news" that has equal importance with the latest
escapades of naughty nymphs in never-never land.
So, its time we stood up and
demanded environmental equity on all the network news
programs, local and national—and especially on the weather channel,
where we are getting more commercials and canned commercial programming
than ‘live weather news’ every day—they’ve become just like the
networks: ‘show me the money; the weather can wait!’
When those talking heads tell us
after the first 6 minutes of a news program what they are going to show
us in the next segment, we should demand that, instead, they should tell
us how many acres of rain forest were lost during the commercial break,
or how many tons of emissions were spewed out that day by all those
airplanes carrying all those politicians and their entourages around the
country, and how much fossil fuel was burned to get two minutes of air
time on the evening "news."
So, its not just about being
sick of the same old "news" that isn’t really
"news" every evening from every network—its about the real
"news" we are missing on the environmental progress we’re
making (or not)—and the need to have the news-viewing public
understand just how critical our sustainability mission is for the
future of our children’s, children’s, children.
2008/1234
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