I have, like many people, a ready suspicion that most of what we see on the television news is only half the truth, or at least half the story. (The one obvious exception is September 11, when the media, and hundreds of amateur photographers, reported the events as they were happening before everyone’s eyes, in real time.) We expect the news to come to us immediately, that’s what the media brightly promises, after all – but the meaning of those events dissapates as quickly as a summer rain. And then it’s on to the next injustice or report of catastrophe. What this creates, it seems to me, is an illusion of involvement, even empathy, without the need to react. It’s your surface involvement that sustains you, maybe because you sense the real story is too complicated, and too horrific, to try to fathom.

Cathy Horyn

February 18th 2012   3 notes