I read the post of Vincent Maher under the title “Forget the quality of journalism, let’s talk about the audience”. In this he denies that there is anything wrong with the quality of journalism and is convinced that the fault is to be found with the audience. After three months of experience with the blogosphere I would like to agree with him. Most people are generally very shallow and out for quick and effortless gratification. They are mostly not capable of intellectual thought and only if you touch on the most basic of human instinct, pleasure and desire, will you evoke any reaction.
But I do not think that it represents a recent development. You must remember that the modern ‘establishment’ has semi-educated, dollied-up and accepted into its bosom a large percentage of people from the lower strata of human existence. These are, to a large extent, the people you’ll find reading Die Son and sitting in front of the TV enjoying Big Brother, 7de Laan, WWF and the Jerry Springer Show. You will also recognize them when they pass you in their small, suped-up cars. They all make this deafening, tribal doef-doef noise!
Some years back these people would hardly have been semi-illiterate, reading Die Keur and comic strips and listening to Springbok Radio stories.
Intellectuals have always been few and far between and due to a bankrupt education system it is just impossible to breed them as fast and in the quantities that this lower form of human life is produced.
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November 24th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Hi JC, I didn’t mean to imply that there isn’t such a thing as poor journalism, just that maybe we should look at the problem from a different angle.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Vincent: I understood what you were saying. I’m just pushing the point further to elicit some measure of thinking and reaction. JCG.