The general decline in standards today

[Patrick Hall]

I do agree with Lizzie Maine about decline, though. I think that as a culture, everything's become so globalized and sensationalized that the situation has become volatile and tense.

I see a distasteful taste for scandal which is amplified in our culture in comparison to others. But all cultures have distasteful elements, and it could be worse - we could be sacrificing virgins as part of our harvest rituals, forcing widows to be immolated on their husband's funeral pyres, or making criminals perform seppuku as punishment for their crimes. I affirm that our culture has a dark, distasteful side, but I think it always has. In fact, it could be cogently argued that our culture is much LESS dark than it was, even during the Golden Era. I just don't understand how the presence of that dark side = a generalized "cultural decline" obvious to anyone who is looking.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've always found it disturbing, that thanks to modern communications, events that would have remained local news had they occurred 30-40 years ago now become national and even international news. Which means more busybodies (both official and unofficial) putting their collective proboscii where it doesn't belong.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One could argue that human beings weren't meant to be this connected -- we aren't able to handle the responsibility that goes along with it. Giving humanity at its present state of cultural evolution access to instant global communications is like giving a five year old a loaded gun. Where's Klaatu now that we need him?

 

[sheeplady]

I think the most distasteful thing about the "pop" media is what is exactly being promoted. It's not every kidnapping or killing, it's the kidnapping and the killings that sell. The killings and kidnappings of the rich, the famous, and/or the conventional beauties.

Recently, a young 21 year old woman from a nearby suburb was brutally murdered following a domestic dispute with her ex-boyfriend. She was missing for a few days before her body was found in a local public park. It dominated the news, even after her body was found. The national news even picked up the story. She was a college student who studied dancing: tall, thin, blonde, and tan.

While the story is tragic (and it deserved local media attention, especially while she was missing and it was assumed that she was alive), two other women went missing during the six months following her death. However, since they weren't beautiful "model-like" women from the suburbs, they didn't get a single mention in the news, yet alone be the top story for three weeks. (I use "model" because that is how one newscasters described how the murdered woman looked.) I only know about them because it was actually written in an editorial to our local paper and I am very tuned into our local media.

 

[Gregg Axley]

Lizzie answered the question posed to me earlier today.
However, speaking of statistics, you can lower certain ones by creating more categories.
12yrs ago I was in law enforcement, and a reporter asked me how another agency could suddenly lower their statistics for robbery (for example). So I showed him...Thanks to a new program, more categories were created spreading the crimes out. What used to be robbery of a convenience store, turned into robbery of a gas station, robbery of a grocery store, and several other variations spreading out the crimes. In a sense crime WAS down, if you were talking about specific categories, but it was still there in plain sight, you just had to know how to read the information.
Here in my town, crime seems down for certain categories, because the news media is focusing on others such as daily murders, and home invasions. What's also decreased are the number of burglaries because now you can just steal someone's identity and have Amazon deliver the items to you. The crime is still there it's just more high tech.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I still remember the O.J. Simpson trial and how disgusted I was back then by the massive amount of media attention it was receiving. But now, in retrospect, considering today's bleak headlines (vis a vis the economy) and our present day realities, I've come to the conclusion that if something as trivial to most of us such as O.J., his glove and dancing DNA could dominate the headlines for months on end like it did over fifteen years ago then maybe things weren't quite that bad.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Geez. O.J. was just lucky he had some horribly stupid members of the Prosecutor's Office make a mess of things so that he smooth got off. Think how it would have been an "equal" bite at the apple, if the D.A.'s office would have got off their rear end and picked up the gloves and put them on O.J.'s hands! He kept his fingers spread apart to keep the gloves from going on when his Attorney half baked putting the gloves on, and the D.A. failed to get up and say, "O.K, now we are gonna get them gloves on you"....I know I would have gotten them on his hands. But yeah, they made the entire O.J. thing a zoo, like it was a H.B.O. made for T.V. movie.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I am an Anglican my friend! We make a religion out of dogged fence-sitting! I have no concerns with the debate actually - people are most welcome to see things as progressing or declining, and there is plenty of evidence for both positions! Which is my point. Society has always been simultaneously progressing or declining depending on where you stand. If it weren't that way, there'd be nothing to debate about. I'm all for debate, as long as we acknowledge at the outset that the purpose of the conversation is the conversation, and not the answers.

I am all for respecting other people's (anyones) religion. However, there is no place to go socially that you or anyone else can hide from the way things are. It will affect you in some form or another rather it be directly or indirectly. Taxes for those programs that help treat those in need due to social problems, increase in cost of insurance for more theft and fraudulent claims, the list goes on and it comes to bringing what happens to each of our front door.

I dislike much of the hype and spin the the media plays in our daily life. But one things the media has done, it has given all of us the information as to how messed up politically and economically we have become Nation by Nation. A few years ago some people could have cared less about some topics as it did not affect them daily or personally as it does now. And to get some answers from conversation and debate is very healthy in my opinion, how else could anyone learn and have some creative positive elements from conversations to help resolve issues, if there were no answers to be found?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Lizzie answered the question posed to me earlier today.
However, speaking of statistics, you can lower certain ones by creating more categories.
12yrs ago I was in law enforcement, and a reporter asked me how another agency could suddenly lower their statistics for robbery (for example). So I showed him...Thanks to a new program, more categories were created spreading the crimes out. What used to be robbery of a convenience store, turned into robbery of a gas station, robbery of a grocery store, and several other variations spreading out the crimes. In a sense crime WAS down, if you were talking about specific categories, but it was still there in plain sight, you just had to know how to read the information.
Here in my town, crime seems down for certain categories, because the news media is focusing on others such as daily murders, and home invasions. What's also decreased are the number of burglaries because now you can just steal someone's identity and have Amazon deliver the items to you. The crime is still there it's just more high tech.

Many of our local politicians around here love to pat themselves on the back by crowing about how the homicide rate is supposedly the lowest that its been since the '50s. The only reason I can think of that explains the lower homicide rate (if true) is because medical science has been able to save more of the victims. What they conveniently leave out is that the attempted murder rate has increased.

 

[Gregg Axley]

Absolutely VC, it's all in how you interpret the data.
As long as you realize that when the politician opens their mouth, the data starts getting skewed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As I said earlier in the thread, I didn't used to have to lock my door at night. Now I do. That's all the evidence I need.

As far as the OJ trial is concerned, in terms of sheer crassness of coverage, it pales by comparison to the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Snyder-Gray case, and the Hall-Mills Case, all of which made a great deal of money for the tabloid papers of the day. The difference, again, is that the tabloids weren't all-pervasive then -- they circulated almost exclusively in the big cities, and for many years New York was the only city to have more than one daily tabloid. If you lived in a small town or small city it was much, much easier to completely ignore trashy news if you so chose because it didn't assault your eyes every time you walked into a grocery store. It was the *exception* rather than the rule. Nowadays, every aspect of the culture is steeped in tabloidism -- and that is not a sign, to me, of an improving society.

 

[Puzzicato]

While the story is tragic (and it deserved local media attention, especially while she was missing and it was assumed that she was alive), two other women went missing during the six months following her death. However, since they weren't beautiful "model-like" women from the suburbs, they didn't get a single mention in the news, yet alone be the top story for three weeks.

I've noticed that sort of thing - a pretty young woman is much better media currency than a plain one. Unless of course the missing plain woman is a prostitute, then we all get to clutch our pearls and click our tongues.

Even at work, we have been asked by newspapers for case-studies of attractive young women, instead of old, funny-looking men. Even if the story behind the man is much more interesting.

in terms of sheer crassness of coverage

... more than one of the British media outlets ran stories commenting on what the mourners wore to Amy Winehouse's funeral. I think that is pretty much the lowest of the low.

 

[Feraud]

This -

It was the *exception* rather than the rule. Nowadays, every aspect of the culture is steeped in tabloidism -- and that is not a sign, to me, of an improving society.

- should be our mantra.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've noticed that sort of thing - a pretty young woman is much better media currency than a plain one. Unless of course the missing plain woman is a prostitute, then we all get to clutch our pearls and click our tongues.

In America, there's something even more vile at work, and most people don't dare to say it out loud because we're supposedly "beyond that sort of thing." But look up the Charles Stuart case and you'll find a very instructive look at the rotten core of modern media culture, and what drives certain stories to be covered in a certain way. It also explains exactly why the OJ case was the sensation it was.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've noticed that sort of thing - a pretty young woman is much better media currency than a plain one. Unless of course the missing plain woman is a prostitute, then we all get to clutch our pearls and click our tongues.

The most famous case in point: The Whitechapel Murders -- aka Jack the Ripper.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Absolutely VC, it's all in how you interpret the data.
As long as you realize that when the politician opens their mouth, the data starts getting skewed.

That is one very powerfully truthful statement. Sadly, we are all the victims of what others do and continue to do when it comes to "politicians".

 

[scooter]

As the marines say, "i could tell he was lying. His lips were moving!"

 

[Gregg Axley]

The longer I'm in government, the more cynical I become.
Then I come home, watch a few comedies (usually involving at least one Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode), and I'm much better. Oh and wine, must have wine.

 

[sheeplady]

I've noticed that sort of thing - a pretty young woman is much better media currency than a plain one. Unless of course the missing plain woman is a prostitute, then we all get to clutch our pearls and click our tongues.

In the U.S., this is particularly true if it is a white woman or a white child who meets conventional beauty standards. And if the story involves sex, drugs, money, incest, or fame, it gets a lot of media coverage. The more of these we can tick off, the better.

This is one of the reasons why I think the Casey Anthony case got so much coverage in the US, because Casey was a white party girl, with a beautiful baby girl. (Casey Anthony was a mother accused of killing her daughter, she was aquitted, which led to public uproar.) Nearby we had a young girl, Erin Maxwell, who was found hung in her room (her brother is serving a murder sentence). Child Protective Services (CPS) had multiple visits to Erin's home, and had notes in her file like "comes to school smelling strongly of cat and dog urine" but it was ok "because she doesn't seem to mind." If anything, Erin's case deserved greater coverage than it got because it shows obvious holes in our child services and we (the public, government, whoever) could use it to understand how to make the system better. But apparently it wouldn't sell.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

The longer I'm in government, the more cynical I become.
Then I come home, watch a few comedies (usually involving at least one Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode), and I'm much better. Oh and wine, must have wine.

I hear ya. Same here, a glass or 2 of merlot and some 3 Stooges and life is good.