I made it to last night’s final Festival of Ideas speaker, Ken Auletta, who talked about media bias.

Unfortunately, I was incredibly tired (still am actually) so I didn’t take notes or write anything when I got home. That leaves you an article in the DP (you’ll notice that the DP article talks about him, but gives very little substance of the talk. Considering the quality of the DP, this is unsurprising, but somewhat appropriate, given the subject) or the article in the Daily Athenaeum. Sorry.

He did mention the four things he believed were most wrong with today’s media: Synergy, lack of humility, hubris, and bias. I think he’s right on as far as that goes. Synergy covered one of the biggest problems (at least to me) and that is the fact that news stories are written to sell copy, not to inform the reader. I was reminded of the summer of 2001 when the story that dominated the news was Shark Attacks! (do you remember that?) All you heard about were shark attacks, and the dangers of sharks, despite the fact that there really had not been an increase in shark attacks that year.

My point is that it seems as if the media often manufactures a crisis that they think will see papers, because the real crises today aren’t sexy and glamorous. Homelessness and unemployment aren’t glamorous. Lack of quality housing and health care aren’t sexy. So the real crises in America go unaddressed while there is a media circus around spectacles that are unimportant.

Anyway, that was the gist of last night’s talk.