The Fourth Branch of Government

I've been watching HBO's The Newsroom TV show lately, and I find myself wishing more than anything else that it weren't fiction.

The time has passed when reporters believed themselves to be serving the public, and instead the time has come when they serve the advertisers.  Nothing is more damaging to the democratic process and society as a whole than a misinformed public.  While a representative democracy, where citizens vote for people to represent them instead of voting directly on issues, is supposed to provide a remedy for a misinformed public in a democracy; the problem still remains.  If the people voting have no idea who to vote for because they have no idea what they actually believe on key issues, then the representatives themselves are forced into voting certain ways on issues that have absolutely zero relevance to the well being of a country.

There is an unfortunate disconnect between the political process and the information process.  We find ourselves more concerned with the new name of a "royal" baby across an ocean than with the interest rates and fiscal policies of the Federal Reserve.  We find ourselves even more interested in Taylor Swift's new song or Kayne West's new baby or Lindsay Lohan's most recent slip with cocaine, than we do with the fact that all of our electronic communications are being monitored by an insanely illegal system which logs any and all email traffic through the United States (which, is most email traffic through the world due to the US psuedo-monopoly on the internet).

It doesn't stop there.  Some news organizations try to foster healthy debate, but because their bosses don't let them remain neutral because nobody is neutral; therefore nobody wants to watch neutrality, they must slant everything one way or the other.

But what does this all lead to?  Well, for starters, I've been trying to follow a news organization on Twitter in order to stay up-to-date with news, but I end up unfollowing within a week because their absurd tweets infuriate me.  These companies will stop at nothing to get a buzz-following, and it's disgraceful.  One of the points made in The Newsroom is that advertising should not fund the news.  It's so simple.  If a regulation were put in place that advertisements could not be ran for one hour during the news, then the news wouldn't have to cater to rating.  If you wanted unbiased news, you could switch to a channel, and know that they are not concerned at all with gaining viewers to attract ad companies to generate revenue.

Granted, this would cut a severe portion of profits from the cable companies and broadcast organizations, but most people pay for TV.  And that's the thing, most people pay to watch 30% commercials or more (why are people okay with this?).

America is at what I like to think of as a "pivot point".  We're engaged in one of the most fiercely competitive economic races of history with the rest of the world.  Our tax code has exponentially grown to the point where even tax lawyers don't understand everything, they have to specialize in certain areas.  Our healthcare system has been standing on the precipice of reform for nearly 5 years now, and our military research and defense spending has continued to grow.  Our national debt has surpassed our national GDP.

Let me say that again, in different terms.  The amount of debt our country is more than our annual economic production.

The national debt is $16 trillion. in 2012, our GDP was $15 trillion.

But, if you ask the average American what the debt is, or even what our GDP was for 2012, they'd probably provide you an inaccurate number.  However, ask them what Trayvon Martin bought before he had an altercation with George Zimmerman.

It's a disgrace, you cannot have a functioning democracy with a brain-dead population.  We are so content to just coast through life and ignore the problems because we're invincible, but the people who try to fix anything are shunned as naysayers and doomsday prophets.  It's not the end of the world, but we are absolutely nearing the end of an era.  The American Era.





(Sources for National debt/gdp:
 Debt Clock: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
World Bank GDP: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD)