In the 98 days that have passed since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., 2,243 Americans have died at the hands of guns.
I’m not going to swarm you with information on the legislation that has occurred since the tragedy (there isn’t any), press you with a new argument on gun regulation (you’ve heard them all before) or tell you what you can do to better arm yourself or fight gun proliferation.
I don’t need to. In the two weeks following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, major media outlets covered everything from the National Rifle Association’s response statement to an in-depth personality examination of the troubled murderer, Adam Lanza.
Consider yourself properly informed. Over the last two decades the world has gone through a media revolution — The Ford Model T equivalent of communication — with the arrival of constant 24-hour news, commentary shows such as “Meet the Press” and “Morning Joe,” political satire with Jon Stewart or Bill Maher and, of course, the internet.
The pursuit of legislation has been sidelined for the pursuit of finding true news. The creative side of entertainment is intersecting with the content, leaving us satisfied with the story, not the necessary results.
The evolution from print media to the television came with major information discontinuity. We are now living the next discontinuity with the arrival of the internet and social media. JFK was the first TV president. Barack Obama is the first true internet president.
We are constantly sorting through facts versus opinions versus fiction, and the concentration of media ownership from multiple outlets to what is known popularly as “The Big 6” (the Walt Disney Corporation, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS and NBCUniversal Media) doesn’t make the process any easier. The balance between the “selling of eyeballs” and content-rich material is enough to sidetrack us from our original ambitions: promote public knowledge for the advancement of society.
Breaking news is the new norm. Truly diving deep into the complexities of a policy is reserved for the classroom, not for the public. Headlines are what satiate our media ADD, and so long as we get the gist of an issue we’ll be fine for our next date or cocktail party (eh … Smokey Joe’s?).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about social media. But restricting us to 140 characters when tweeting just plays into dumbing down the discussion.
More so, bouncing from window to window, topic to topic feeds into further creating ADD when synthesizing information as opposed to fostering depth in the knowledge.
As Ty Kiisel quipped in a Forbes op-ed, Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” campaign should probably be replaced with, “Are you paying attention to me now?”
It’s been 98 days since the Sandy Hook tragedy. Between now and then there’s been the sequester, a new pope, Rob Portman’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, a potential North Korean long-range ballistic missile, Chinese hacking of American intelligence, further European economic disintegration, a crisis in Cyprus, the continuing political collapse of Syria, ceasefires broken in Israel and the riveting Undergraduate Assembly elections.
I’m glad I know these things (UA aside), but I’m disappointed that I don’t know them all that well.
Our mainstream exposure to current events is limited to sound bites, and that’s both the Big 6’s fault and ours. Real change is not going to occur without real knowledge and acute attention.
Our ADD not only allows politicians not to act but also encourages it. With volatile public attention, it’s in a politician’s best interest to ignore a wave of negative opinion opposed to stepping into the storm.
Reform isn’t easy. President Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968 was not the response to one tragedy, but multiple: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
However, in the 1960s, Americans responded with relentless criticism of the country’s gun laws, despite other major events that also demanded their attention such as the Vietnam War.
If we stay focused and if we truly strive to understand these current events, reform can be ours too.
Anthony Liveris is a College junior and vice president of College Republicans from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. His email address is amliveris@gmail.com. Follow him @AnthonyLiveris. “Liberatus” usually appears every other Monday.
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