Escape the News

One day I realised that technology focused web pages were not "news" pages. They covered what was new, some of the content was important. But I felt that I just enjoyed reading it too much. I had a nagging feeling that there was really something else, somewhere else - something more important that I had somehow missed.


Technology media are so perfectly perched on that balance between news and entertainment; fed by what Eddie Izzard calls techno- joy and also giving us small golden insights into the world of tomorrow. I absolutely relish reading about the latest whims of the gigacorporations such as Apple and Google, corporations that may very well change the course of history just as much as any minor war. But is it news? Is it news when we flock to it as good little escapist children, ready to just hear one more detail on that latest iProduct?

The notion of escapism has been a dominant idea in our popular media conception now for some time. The idea is that, because of the horrors of the real world, we humans seek refuge in popular culture - to dive into fictional universes to escape the one we're already in. Popular art is often accuse of this; fingers are pointed to online gaming and superhero movement. Art can also provide us with some of the best illustrators of this trend.

Takeshi Murakami

The best example is the japanese superflat movement, started early in the 00's by Takeshi Murakami. He maintained that the flattened art- style of japan reflected it's flattened people - a people where tv- tropes constituted much of reality, a reality where real and false elements had long been smeared together by an overexposure to that indelible scar of the last century; the bomb. That art and reality had become superflat, revealed only that the escapism was absolute - that there was no longer an alterity to which the escaped could return. However, japans explicit example only reveals something implicit to art in culture. Much of even our most revered art has had escapist elements. An example is in Wagners operas, which are set in pseudohistorical times featuring vikings and magic. The megalomaniac music of Wagner later fed into the likewise grandiose fantasies of Nazism. As fantasy turns into reality it becomes obvious not only to ask; where are we escaping from, but also; where are we escaping to?

In this us technology- freaks may actually try to answer that question. We are escaping into cyberspace. Cyberspace isn't a world within ourselves, we know, because we can only see it there before us on our screens. We cannot touch it - it is trapped inside our computers; only extractable by efforts of the new aesthetic. In reality cyberspace may be just as flat as the many permutations of realspace. The cyberspace isn't far away from us - it is a part of us: And when we are reading about it, we are actually reading about our future self. The early adopters are the future- oriented rich kids, who know that their lives would be greatly enhanced by a HUD display in their glasses. If that's not escapism I don't know what is. But it's superflat. When we think we are looking ahead we are really looking into ourselves. This introspection is no sin in itself, but it becomes so when we stop being extrospective; when we just stop paying attention.

I can only describe the places I escape to  - which is broadly reflected in art and technology. But I would expect the same for every other element that is not strictly news. How about sports achievements? They certainly have escapist elements to them! How about all the celebrity stuff, and the sex stuff and all that with no humanity but only empty pictures of vanity?

I must leave the question unanswered because, as Wittgenstein showed us, to draw from specific examples into general rules is almost doomed to fail. And yet we know, as the Americans would say, in our hearts when something is wrong. Then how can we translate this into a rule, a sentence or a firm conviction that what we are seeing is wrong, and should be some other place?

I think the (paper) papers were  on a right track when they separated out the sports sections to themselves, the cartoons in the back, and so on. This is an internal demarcation, where you put the news in the front and center. As the papers tilted more and more towards tabloidism the news section was filled with other things than news - and some of the things I would consider news were not up to journalistic standards. Ands so that famous demarcation problem came up again. Now in an age where newspapers live on the net, the sectioning has all but disappeared to the always on "feed" - ironically mimicking the format of the blog they once so despised and feared.

We know that news stories that are not properly researched are wrong for obvious reasons. But is there any harm in stickig a sports page in the middle of other stories?
Historically the media has had a civic responsibility to enlighten. They might not have had this, history could have gone another way: But we, the readers, the people and the politicians, have recognised this function. We delegate the responsibility of keeping us informed to the newspapers. The readers have dutifully read them, the people have dutifully reacted to them and the politicians have gone easy on the tax with them. And so it is a two way responsibility. The newspapers enlighten - we read.

However newspapers are subject to economy just the same. As they notice that the papers swings in popularity to reflect the content of the papers, they change the content of their papers not to report what is right, but to report what is popular. Our natural tendency seems to be a sort of escapism. We don't want there to be bad things happening, and we want to be in that world were the new smartphones are. It is only natural then that the papers, in order to earn more money, print more about smartphones and less about wars.

The prime example now is the london olympics, which, though they can be said to be important in an international relation kind of sense, are now covered in strictly escapist terms. They harken to past notions of nationalism and revel in hero- worship. Meanwhile the UN has suffered another security counsel veto against weapons- trade. The implications are huge - the very UN system seems to be failing when any crisis is near. Meanwhile only one out of the six most popular newspapers have informed us of this. The others have the olympics firmly tattooed into their front pages.

When we then go online to read "the news", what we are likely to find there are only our own fantasy. Our world has become self- referential and superflat. We cannot escape the papers that we are so used to, because they don't point us on - away from our bubbles and into a world where things are really happening - things we could have done something to prevent, or at least reacted to. America, Russia and China, the three countries that blocked the weapons- embargo can expect not to be challenged by anyone, because honestly; how many will ever know?

So what will we do? When our natural tendency is to escape the horrors on of the real world, when serious news isn't presented where we expect it to be, when search engines and facebook hides the truth from us; what will happen then? What happens when we escape the news?

Some have already recognised this problem. In selected circles so called "serious" news media become popular. Le Monde, The New York Times and similar local versions are seeing an upswing in their popularity. And a dedicated news service called "democracy now!" is doing well. But even I, with my BA in political science can find the news service dreary, and I don't check up on them on a regular basis. There is so much else to see! These media are also strictly for the highly educated - and being níche, they don't cover any of the lighter stories we find in the tabloids.

In a way one can't blame papers for the segregation of the strictly tabloid news from the serious papers. With growing markets a bit of specialisation is required or you are outcompeted. Still - one might be free on a blog such as this to lament the sad state of media, when they can't be bothered to take a break from their normal olympics mode to mention an international catastrophe.

In the end it seems that responsibility falls to the individual. As a sociologist I'd say that this is an impossible task, and that even I who are interested in international news find it hard to keep up when the news are not presented to me in mainstream media. Excuses like these sound flat - but are at the same time o so real to any person living in information society. I can only say to my self, and now to others this: If only at times, escape the flatness of your known world - find that alter reality that is found beyond the close boarders. Escape the news. Find the news.