Homs, Syria, January 6, 2012 (Photo credit: FreedomHouse)
Spain is setting out an austerity budget of over $50 billion of cuts as it prepares to ask the rest of the Eurozone to save their floundering economy. Greek politicians are negotiating the release of the second tranche of their country's bailout, while the population goes on a general strike over the $15 billion cuts. The UN are expecting almost three-quarters of a billion refugees to flee Syria before the end of the year from the Civil War.
What's top of the trends in the world this morning? 'Mapplegate'.
Yes, it seems that the world is more concerned about another made up '-gate' around some database errors that put the Washington Monument across the road from where it actually is, rather than the ongoing fallout from the Arab Spring and a financial meltdown that could pull down an entire continent and drag the rest of the world towards an economic depression that would rival that of the 1930s.
Right now there are major issues around the world that will have a long-lasting impact on every one of us that demand attention. And our focus is where?
Will the NFL referees get into their new Nike sponsored uniforms in time for Thursday night's game.
So much of online media is driven by a need to boost viewing numbers, aggregate RT's, and aggressively collect 'likes', that the agenda is no longer driven by a crusading need to tell a story, but on the fluff that will be shared around the soft underbelly of the online world. It's no longer about what the population needs to know, but on what the population wants to know. Given the choice between the hard edges of reality or manufactured anger directed against an over-achieving digital watch, many will choose the easy option of funny country maps on their iPhone. Countries that are currently tearing themselves apart in real life over issues far greater than mismatched aerial photography.
Problems need to be acknowledged before they can be overcome. That's true of the issues facing the world today as much as it is true for those facing an individual. Right now, it is hard to see how we can overcome a myriad of issues that affect us all, when we'd rather share 'ten pictures of kittens burying their heads in the sand' than 'the ten biggest issues facing the United Nations.'
The world cannot be forced to accept and understand these issues overnight, but those of us with a voice should be looking beyond the easy-to-find ephemera and reheated arguments that collect page views while adding nothing to the discussion. We should be challenging our readers to realize just how much of an impact world events will have on their lives.
Just as getting our children to eat vegetables is only appreciated once we become grandparents, showing society that the threads holding it together are weakening is a thankless, but necessary, task of the media. It is a calling we all implicitly accepted, and one that we must continue to carry out with diligence, vigor, and passion.
Or we can tell you that the new book from JK Rowling has cussing in the first fifty pages.
