Erin Brockovich: Media Negativity & Why People Are Obsessed With It…

Whenever I go out of the country, as exciting as it is to experience new cultures and see the sights, it’s always good to get back home. There are draw- backs of course, pedestrian chores pile up while you’re away.  Phone calls, old mail,  bills, and a pile of pending work that expands a little each day until you finally attack it: that prosaic stuff is gradually taken care of.  Of course, jet lag strikes like a ton of bricks while you’re playing catch-up; you’re perky while everyone else is winding down or lurking around like a zombie during normal active time.  Depending on how laggy that lag is, it can be zombiehood full time, until normalcy creeps back.

Certainly, after the long trip to Mumbai India, and Istanbul Turkey—there is no place like home.  A speaking tour can be a breathless rush with no time to think about anything, but what’s going on in the moment.  Inevitably a big part of lag recovery/getting back to speed is catching up on the news. And let me tell you what really floored me after a recent trip was watching the negativity coming from every news channel that I turned on; from every newspaper that I picked—bad news from  every corner of the world. 

All we see, all we hear is negative, negative, negative.  I know that the business of journalism is all about reporting news for people to read.  And probably because people tend to be attracted to reading the bad stuff, journalists tend to present negative information because that’s the market people consume.   But it’s ridiculous.  Because the majority of people’s appetite runs to the bad that is going on …the media is doing all it can to ensure that everything we hear and read is nothing but negative.  How about some- thing positive for a change? 

Come on journalism people.  After all the time you spent presenting Obama as the poster child of hope, why are you now stapling his photo on the wall and making him your bulls-eye for the next four years. The press thrives on tearing down, but this is ridiculous. The LA Times led the local pack with, “Liberals not pleased with go-slow approach by Obama” and, “Where’s the President Obama who promised to unite us?” and “GOP Senators say Obama Off to a Bad Start.”  And this isn’t even scratching the surface of the negativity we face on a daily basis.  Good God.  Can we realistically expect the man to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, cure the energy crisis, heal the economy, raise the standards of education, change bankruptcy laws, end the war, and restore our standing in the world—etc., etc, etc. overnight?

I want to remind everyone that we elected someone who gives us the promise of hope.  He said, “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”

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We put him in the hot seat.  It took a lot of us to vote him in.  He can’t do this alone.  We all have to help.  I look at my own backlog of work and it looks insurmountable, but I know I can do it.  That attitude should apply to the country as well.  We didn’t get here overnight.  Our recovery will take time.  Let’s give our president  some breathing room.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was our economy.  Government wheels have always grinded slowly in a cumbersome, clanky, make-shift sort of way, but they do turn.  Why not give President Obama time to let his political WD-40 sink in?

What or who is behind this negativity?

If I could draw cartoons, this is what I would draw:  A few fat cat CEOs walking up a steep hill without forethought or vision to look on the other side of the hill, where the rest of us—millions and millions of us—wait in anger at being robbed, victimized and disenfranchised at those who skimmed profit packages while millions of us who might have been in their financial custodianship instead, lost their homes.   Home Depot’s Chief Executive Robert Nardelli who retired with a $210 million package, and the Madoffs of the world are happy that the spotlight is on President Obama. If we look at who stands to profit from the negativity is it industry?  But what would there be to gain?  Who gains is the media who is simply looking for something to fill up their pages. Regardless where  blame is placed, it is the media who can help light the way with a little change of attitude.

Remember Pandora’s box?  You know, that mythological box of evils, all of which escaped when Pandora opened it to satisfy her curiosity–leaving trapped in the box one last entity: hope. We should never forget that trapped inside the box of all the evils that inflict the world right now, there is always that germinal seed of hope.  I do believe that if our media is going to talk about the ills and evils of government, let’s not leave hope in the box, but put her on the page too, and keep her in our hearts.  Because always, in addition to the belief in better times to come, and the work and plans it will take to get there, we all need that ray of hope that lights our way.  America is a place where all things are possible.