Wag the Dog

In this film we get a good insiders look at the media machine at work and the lengths it’s prepared to go to for a “story”. That the story line was barely plausible didn’t seem to connect with them (the media generally, and in this case TV in particular). Even if it did it wouldn’t have mattered since the prospect of either war and or scandal excites the viewing public in roughly equal measure. In the production and presentation of the pseudo war the Hollywood media did their mediation with flare and finesse. By contrast the TV and Press media fell lamentably short in their handling of the “breaking news”. In their failure to check the facts, before deciding to run with the story, they displayed a serious lack of professionalism, so much so that they could reasonably be accused of complicity. Recent history tells us that this (non) story is far too close to reality for comfort. Think here of Iraq and Afghanistan and you get the picture. Facts were manufactured when needed and the few snippets of “reality” that did exist were massaged beyond recognition. A war was needed, so a war we had. Our (the public) bulwark against the extravagancies and extremes of our leaders (elected) failed in their basic job namely, to inform, to keep us abreast of the real reality that life is. They failed miserably. The great bulldog “fourth estate” turned out to be little more than a pussycat and neutered to boot.

One big question though, are we the public, entitled to better, do we care? Perhaps not; have we become too complacent, perhaps yes. An increasing diet of reality shows on TV, Big Brother and the “X” Factor etc., portrayals of a life so lowly and dysfunctional as to beggar belief. The following in-depth analyses in the Press the next day seems to have left many of us without the ability or desire to differentiate between fact and fiction.

We have become careless, compliant and therefore complicit, an uncomfortable place to be at. For the moment though we seem happy enough with our fate. C’est la vie.