Ok. This may start a heated discussion but as BigAl says, it's been rather quiet in here lately.
I had a lively discussion tonight with a few people, about whether or not the media (American media in this case) is over saturating people with September 11th coverage. Has it come to the point where it has begun to cheapen the memory of that day? Where is the line between the coverage of news and the exploitation of events for ratings / profit?
On a related issue, do you pay more or less attention now to international events and does the media do a good job of getting us this information? I had thought and hoped that Americans would have begun to pay more attention to the world beyond our borders after 9/11, but that does not seem to be the case. (at least to me) The media seems preoccupied with maintaining our insular attitude. It is almost as if many Americans would like the outside world to go away and leave them alone. I cringe to think of the number of people I know who, even now, can't find Afghanistan on a map and have no idea why the seemingly unimportant events in a small country can have drastic consequences for the rest of the world.
While I'm venting...
Our isolationist attitude cost us and Europe dearly in World War 2. Had we waited even longer to enter the war, odds are England would have been defeated and worse, the Nazis may have even developed nuclear weapons long before the United States. Are we making the same mistakes now? Is our continued national ignorance about the outside world costing us our security? To relate this to the other questions, what responsibility does the media have in deciding what Americans should be paying attention to?
I had a lively discussion tonight with a few people, about whether or not the media (American media in this case) is over saturating people with September 11th coverage. Has it come to the point where it has begun to cheapen the memory of that day? Where is the line between the coverage of news and the exploitation of events for ratings / profit?
On a related issue, do you pay more or less attention now to international events and does the media do a good job of getting us this information? I had thought and hoped that Americans would have begun to pay more attention to the world beyond our borders after 9/11, but that does not seem to be the case. (at least to me) The media seems preoccupied with maintaining our insular attitude. It is almost as if many Americans would like the outside world to go away and leave them alone. I cringe to think of the number of people I know who, even now, can't find Afghanistan on a map and have no idea why the seemingly unimportant events in a small country can have drastic consequences for the rest of the world.
While I'm venting...

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