That’s Infotainment!

“The mass media in the United States are a blend of journalism and showmanship, information and entertainment, and professional altruism and marketplace opportunism,” declared a report sent to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence 50 years ago this month.

“These are obviously qualities which, if not entirely antithetical, at least cannot be relied upon to coexist in perfect harmony. When they clash, the discord is important, for, if one thing is clear about the American media, it is that they touch our lives in ways far too intimate and complex to ignore.”

The report contended that Americans had

become a nation of the entertained, and it is the media, for the most part, who provide our entertainment. Indeed, our appetites for entertainment, far more than our quest for knowledge, have brought the media from the economic position represented by the individual printer of two centuries ago to the status of a major business industry.

The report concluded that “the news media can play a significant role in lessening the potential for violence by functioning as a faithful conduit for intergroup communication, providing a true marketplace of ideas, providing full access to the day’s intelligence, and reducing the incentive to confrontation that sometimes erupts in violence,” which it identifies as “a subtle and uncertain mission.” Indeed it was, and so remains.