TV is relentlessly feeding us fear-laden rhetoric

The bulk of America’s daily television news  is relentlessly feeding us fear-laden rhetoric and visuals.    

This was brought home to me clearly through a captivating video on “TED Talk” by a 35-year-old lady, Dalia Mogahed.  At age 17 she devoted herself to the study of the  Muslim faith. Her  study of the Koran was deep and thorough. Dalia  Mogahed is presently Director of Research at the “Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.”  

 Dalia Mogahed reported  this: “One or more studies in neuroscience show that when we are afraid, three things happen and we become accepting of them. They are: (1)  Authoritarianism (2) Conformity (3) Prejudice.” Wow! How does that relate to the eager followers of, Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, for example? It hits all three right on the head! Consider what  fear-based thinking is doing to America right now in our all important race to the White House. Fear is forefront in much of the rhetoric while faith and facts are taking a back seat.

Another most important insight from her talk: “ISIS has as much to do with Islam as the KKK has to do with Christianity.” And this: “How does consuming fear 24 hours a day affect the health of our democracy, our free thoughts?” How about our media on this point?

 Here’s an idea: How about one national week a year named “Transformation Week” or “Inspiration Week” where every major television newscast fills its time with the likes of Dalia Mogahed and other “TED Talk” type of discourses. This week would be mandated and sanctioned though a federal law with federal grants to help with any unfortunate loss in advertising revenues for individual news outlets. The news panels would be required to discuss the content among themselves. Public responses would be eagerly reported.  National assessments would be made to see if such a radical TV news cycle  would actually begin to change minds, change attitudes and actually be transforming and/or inspirational. 

The way I see it, nothing will really change until individual minds and attitudes change.

-Bob McClellan

Polson