KISS-a modern acronym keep it simple and stupid. I heard a vice president of a
radio station KTOZ in Springfield Missouri talk of this guiding principle and its
importance in the media (at least his portion of it). I believe that they hold a similar view
at the News-leader. The News-leader is a product not a vessel of information to
enlighten people to live better more informed and happier lives. It is a device that is
designed to acclimate people to the culture of consumption. It only serves to educate
when people need to be more educated consumers. News is trivialized in the News-
leader, how ironic. The fact that it is the called the News-leader means nothing, it may as
well be called The Corporate Culture Gazette or more, aptly The Springfield Advertizer.
Once I heard from the annals of the corporate media that the newspaper of old
was dead and they were only too eager to usher in the new newspaper that is hipper to
pop culture’s culture of conformity from which ad revenues are increased because people
are more inclined to consume more products to keep up with others in the community
who lives are also unduly focused on material accumulation. It makes more sense for
newspapers to embrace this tide by catering to the advertisers creating a newspaper that
complements the ideal aura which implanted in the consumers mind will reflect the
packaging of manufactured consent.
The media outlets are the factories that create product to stimulate demand for goods
and ore goods. Their job is not to present to us objective and unbiased news-for that
might undermine the extrusion of mindless consumerism that pervades our culture-but
to create images that complement the work of advertisers and the people involved in the
crafting of a public relations image that the corporate chieftains desire. For in corporate
culture the ideal is the creation of optimally positive brand image that increases the
elasticity of brand loyalty. Elasticity is the resistance to functions of passivity and
apathy that work in consumer culture to unglue adherence to a particular icon of
popular or commercial culture. Often times elasticity working as function of brand
loyalty, actually works against rational consumer decision making.
Example: people are so enamored to cars that they will resist government and
social pressures (extremist environmentalist pressures) to live without them for
they have been so successfully inserted into our consciousness. They have
become seen as necessities, which are elastic to pressures stemming from
pollution concerns, gas hikes, taxes and inflation that should reduce car use, but
instead people continue to buy and use cars. Because they would still rather
sacrifice other things to pay for the necessity of having the use of the auto.
People identify some emblems and logos of corporate culture as icons of security
in chaotic world of uncertainty. Colors and product presentation is important for
this reason. The logo and image of the product is just as if not more important than
whether the product is efficient in doing what it promises to do for the consumer.
What follows is a irrational bond to products that create a image of necessity and
attractiveness from the reification of primitive symbolism. It is this primitive
symbolism that is dangerous precisely because it is not rational-it does not emanate
from reasoned responsible individuals who have a concern for making people aware
of the truth. More-over it is designed to appeal to the lower essences that stimulate
addictive desires of imbalance within the body mind spirit triad.
The newspaper they have said is dead as vessel of serious news, because that is
not what the people want. Maybe so, but what has affected the newspaper reader so as to
increase his apathy and reduce his attention span?