Minding Each Other's Business
by Brighid Mooney

I generally have a lot of free time. The 9 to 5 daily grind for me usually involves repeatedly checking my email and surfing the net for about eight hours. The web usually seems so ... infinite. It is "world wide," after all. But when you spend up to 40 hours a week surfing it, you start to find edges. This is even truer in the world of online news. I read the news headlines most every morning, and often throughout the day in my infinite boredom. I had previously been under the impression that the news was meant to keep an eye on the government, so that they don't try to pull one over on us, and also to inform us of the important, and relevant, world events that will somehow effect our lives in some way. So, obviously, I am unsure where Britney Spears comes into all this.

If I wanted to know about the comings and goings of Britney Spears' personal life, I would read her website. But I don't. So I don't. In spite of that, however, I somehow know much more about her than I would really care to, including all manner of detail about her marriage to Kevin Federline and her impending motherhood. The fact that Britney Spears is in a family may be interesting to her fans, but it's not really something I consider news. Likewise, the Michael Jackson trial has gotten much more coverage than can really be considered necessary. And yet I read all of it. I don't want to, but I just can't help myself. But neither of these things has any bearing on my life in any way whatsoever.

The Terri Schiavo case was just another example of our national obsession with other people's problems. For weeks we were endlessly inundated with the life and death disagreement between Schiavo's husband and parents, and then later, the federal government. As sad as that case was, it was essentially none of our business, as it was an intensely private matter. It was even far less the government's business. The fact that George W. Bush and congress tried to pry their way into the case was newsworthy, however, because it speaks to the dangers we face with the government trying to force its way into our private lives. Smaller government? Smaller government does not determine whether an innocent person lives or dies, especially when the head of that government is known for his love of executions when he was governor. Nor does smaller government try to impeach the judges of the lower courts for making a decision they disagree with. The political motivation of their actions is more than obvious and is something that deserves our attention, especially as it was wholly and entirely wrong. The rest of it should never have been a matter for national speculation.

Foreign news services are generally better about reporting on actual information than the American news, and as long as we continue to get wrapped up in inconsequential matters like Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and one family's personal trauma, we are never going to have our national eye focused on the things that really matter. Today the news is more about entertainment than information, and this will probably remain so until the day that news does not rely on advertisers to earn money. As long as advertisers are the primary source of income for news organizations, the news will be directed toward what the advertisers feel will gain the widest readership, not what news is the most important for us to know. I think that the news in all its forms, newspaper, television, radio, should be paid for with taxes, and thus be a service of the people, by the people, and for the people, rather than remaining indebted to advertisers. However, until this can be changed, I suspect that we will all just keep reading about Britney and Michael, in spite of ourselves.

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