'Bred Crumbs
This is now the past. Go to the new 'Bred Crumbs.
10.05.01
01:13 PM
Time to 'fess up: recent entries here linking to comforting or empowering writings about facing fear in the wake of, you know, have been aimed at myself as much as readers. Lately, I've let fear get the best of me a couple of times, and I'm trying to figure out how to stop that -- something I had trouble doing even back in more innocent times, such as, oh, the first half of 2001.
Like many others, I seek information now more then ever, but reading or watching the news accomplishes nothing but triggering dread. Wednesday morning, the disconcerting irony hit me: I majored in journalism and spent 16-plus years working for newspapers -- as the famed too-smart-for-network-TV reporter and anchor Linda Ellerbee cagily put it, "committing journalism" -- yet now there is no news source that I trust.
The American mass media -- TV, newspapers, and newsmagazines -- have become terrorists themselves, painting nightmare scenarios with absolutely no context or guidance, accomplishing nothing but scaring the populace. The "alternative" weeklies are too likely to put an increasingly untrustworthy überleftist spin on it all. Online, the portals spew the mass offerings with their priorities set by automatic feeds and whomever their content partners happen to be, and Salon positions itself as an independent voice worthy of your subscription dollars but follows the scattershot model of the newspapers and magazines that spawned its staff -- again, grave speculation and little information.
But there are options. First, weblogs themselves, which can become a reliable filter of what's out there. And my friend Jack has directed me to NPR, a time and ear commitment I'm not yet up to, and BBC News. The latter is becoming my new primary news source, even for U.S. matters. That's right -- it seems a British service can cover and present American news better than American news agencies. The BBC relays the vast range of world and national events with clarity and balance, concentrating on what is actually happening instead of what could happen and considering the background to everything. How refreshing.
Not only that, turns out the BBC site has a pretty good Farscape section. Yeah, the Brits are a half-season behind, but still it's a fine resource for further exploration of the Uncharted Territories. (My god, I sound like a Sci-Fi Channel commercial.)
Like many others, I seek information now more then ever, but reading or watching the news accomplishes nothing but triggering dread. Wednesday morning, the disconcerting irony hit me: I majored in journalism and spent 16-plus years working for newspapers -- as the famed too-smart-for-network-TV reporter and anchor Linda Ellerbee cagily put it, "committing journalism" -- yet now there is no news source that I trust.
The American mass media -- TV, newspapers, and newsmagazines -- have become terrorists themselves, painting nightmare scenarios with absolutely no context or guidance, accomplishing nothing but scaring the populace. The "alternative" weeklies are too likely to put an increasingly untrustworthy überleftist spin on it all. Online, the portals spew the mass offerings with their priorities set by automatic feeds and whomever their content partners happen to be, and Salon positions itself as an independent voice worthy of your subscription dollars but follows the scattershot model of the newspapers and magazines that spawned its staff -- again, grave speculation and little information.
But there are options. First, weblogs themselves, which can become a reliable filter of what's out there. And my friend Jack has directed me to NPR, a time and ear commitment I'm not yet up to, and BBC News. The latter is becoming my new primary news source, even for U.S. matters. That's right -- it seems a British service can cover and present American news better than American news agencies. The BBC relays the vast range of world and national events with clarity and balance, concentrating on what is actually happening instead of what could happen and considering the background to everything. How refreshing.
Not only that, turns out the BBC site has a pretty good Farscape section. Yeah, the Brits are a half-season behind, but still it's a fine resource for further exploration of the Uncharted Territories. (My god, I sound like a Sci-Fi Channel commercial.)
[Previously]
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Hidden Deadly Productions makes short films, including CrossWalk (2003) and The Point of Boxes (coming in 2006?).
Pictured: Rubble from the destruction of the Central Freeway, San Francisco, April 2003. Photos by the author.
Pictured: Views from San Francisco Bay, July 2003. Photos by the author.
Pictured: Videogames projected onto a wall from an Atari 2600, July 2003. Photos by the author.
Pictured: Ranch near Hollister, New Year's Day 2003. Photos by the author.
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(cc)1996-2005 Tim Bland. This work licensed under a Creative Commons License.