This evening a few of us interns (and by a few, I regretfully mean only myself and the National Security interns, Maggie and Dan) ventured away from the hustle and bustle that has been our first week at CAP and caught the opening day showing of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

To be quite honest, I wasn’t expecting much.  I mainly ended up going because Dan seems like a nice guy and he had been talking this film up all week.  Additionally, and probably the most pure reason for why I made an effort, my social life thus far as been considerably lame as work has left me surprisingly exhausted. Every night I crawl into bed by nine or ten, usually falling asleep with the lights on, yuck!  (Note:  I said “surprisingly” for all of you who might be screaming at your computers WTF? you’re just the video guy!)  But my apparent lack of stamina doesn’t have me worried because I figure that, just like the gentle ascension climbers must make up Mount Everest, it seems I too must acclimate; adapting my college, “concert or keg till 4am”, lifestyle to the grueling 9-6 of this pseudo “real-world” internship. 

Anyway, I digress.

$4.2 million in one day, not too shabby.

Analysts say Ron Paul's traditionally conservative constitutionalism and his "Out- of-Iraq" foreign policy give him broad support.

Could Ron Paul be the first legitimate dark-horse candidate in modern history?

Mass media’s mission is not providing quality information; it’s about winning a competition for your attention.

This hypothesis is made clear in this article which appeared on the front page of The New York Times last week.  With the loss of several staple anchors in the last couple of years (one to lung cancer another to an Iraqi IED) there appears to be a substantial power vacuum in the world of evening news.  No longer is NBC the head-hauncho of night time information, their ratings have slipped to rival company ABC and now the networks are shifting around lineups trying to figure out how to keep enough viewers to stay at the top.

What I find really interesting about this article is the way in which the New York Times describes the current situation of its contemporary news outlets.  It’s interesting because as one mass media program evaluates the situation of another, we can witness a kind of psychological analysis of how mass media views itself. 

What I am talking about is based off of George Lakoff’s work with conceptual metaphors.  A detailed inspection of how language creates specific impressions, assumptions, and mental images when a certain word is used. 

In this example, The New York Times is a news outlet reporting about another news outlet, and so their insight, as a contemporary of the mass media they are reporting about lends perspective as to how mass media conceptualizes itself.  Let’s look at what words The New York Times uses to describe the current situation in evening news …

“Dominance, race, challenged, scored, victory, fallout, successor, supremacy, double victory”

This language sounds appropriate for a commentator on ESPN or for the Super bowl, but this article is referring to the media which is supposed to provide millions of people with factual news, not quality entertainment.  What the New York Times article shows us is that the priority of major news networks is beating out their competition.  They conceptualize their existence as a competitive market and it would follow that they believe that their ratings are the most important thing at stake. In the background I can hear Ricky Bobby yell "If you're not first, your're last!" 

At some point this mentality would be acceptable, if the focus of these news networks was to increase ratings by improving their ability to deliver accurate news, but the changes being made are aesthetic in nature.  Undoubtedly changing the face of the anchor does not affect the accuracy of the reporting, but that is precisely the networks response.         

What is at stake for news networks is $500 million dollars in advertising and the reason for the competitive mentality.  They will do whatever is necessary, changing faces, flashy graphics, music, makeup and plastic surgery – anything to make you watch.

There needs to be a serious adjustment to the mission of mass media.  It is not the entertainment industry.  I say we need a mass media news market where advertisements are left for the Super bowl.  

I think that it was probably a lesson learned from Vietnam, the images of our coffined soldiers returning home dead from the battlefield busted the emotional flood gates which sent thousands into the streets protesting the war. We’ve pretty much taken care of that problem now, as major news networks in the U.S. rarely show pictures of dead or wounded soldiers, instead we see zooming graphics of Bald Eagles and American flags or maybe a couple of close ups of a jet or an aircraft carrier or something.

We’ve always been good at portraying how much ass America kicks, but what we have been pretty bad at in times of conflict is putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes. Yes, we are aware of how many U.S. soldiers have been killed since the start of operations (3100) but how many Iraqis? Don’t know? Don’t worry your not alone; most Americans have no concept of how many Iraqi civilians have lost their lives since we set foot on their soil.

The most conservative statistic is 54,000, where as John Hopkins University estimates a number much larger, 650,000. But with the median American citizen’s guess being at 9,890, it’s apparent that our public has no real conception, either way, of the destruction that is going on in Iraq. It is this fact that makes my skin crawl when I hear people discuss the costs of war and freedom in Iraq. “The Iraqis must pay the price for their freedom!” Fair enough, but how large are we going to make the bill?  If you want to do something to help sway public opinion towards peace, let people know that they would have to multiply the number of people killed on 9/11 two hundred and seventeen times in order to equal the number of Iraqi civillians killed.