Thursday, January 14, 2010

Another Nail in the Coffin for the Dinosaur Media

Our local "radical rag," the Colorado Springs Independent, raan the following letter to the editor that nails the Big Media's distorted priorities:

Reviewing reviews

News stations compiled their Top 10 lists of moments that made the decade. The rise of gossip media and Britney Spears shaving her head have made the list. Where are the truly monumental moments that reached past trash media and truly impacted our lives?

Somehow, Heath Ledger's death holds more weight than President Bush declaring war on Iraq. We all know what it means to pull a Columbine, as its eerie remnants echo through campus killings, including Virginia Tech.

We've learned to associate terror with skin color and culture, easily forgetting the domestic terror that happens across America. Somehow, a father slipping into his daughter's bed is less important than imposing our idea of freedom on a country thousands of miles away. Our soldiers lying dead in the sand have become the new face of patriotism.

People live in Tent City, along Interstate 25 and other areas in Colorado Springs, driven there by adjustable-rate mortgages and unemployment while our city offers $53 million in incentives to keep the U.S. Olympic Committee from moving. The poor are left to suffer and die, yet their deaths get less airtime than the increase in cosmetic surgeries.

We should look at how our media perpetuates ignorance. Realize this was a decade of indifference: that we are no longer surprised by deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan or pictures of prisoner abuse; the poor continue to suffer; children in less-affluent areas, and around the world, still get hookworm and other diseases for want of shoes, while celebrities spend over $1,000 on a pair of shoes.

Resolve, as a new decade begins, to open your eyes to these disparities. See your contribution to the media mentality that seeks to dictate importance. Recognize what is truly worth fighting for and what can be done without.

— Brandi Ballard

Colorado Springs

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