Making News

With news cycles consumed with anything and everything trump, one wonders what’s going on in so many other arenas.  Namely financial and economics, education, research, health delivery and health research (medications, diagnoses, treatments, etc.), market product and service trends, career trends, international relations, diplomacy, skirmishes, hostilities and wars, religion and spirituality, governance and justice trends, and so much more. You get the idea.

There is much more going on in the world and nation than trump.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Trump manages the attention and focus of the world and the country by manipulating happenings, events, and utterances. As long as he has something to do with it, it’s news. He said as much in a 1990 Playboy Magazine interview. Following that interview, all history follows the trump line. His thoughts. His take on things.

Reality, however, gives us much more to focus on. Several billion people live on the planet. How they manage their affairs of life is the stuff of news. How nations behave with one another is news. How major institutions all over the globe function and produce good things for others is news. Universities prepare students for careers and lives well beyond the school’s degrees and certifications. Research is conducted and discoveries made. Discoveries shared and applied, too, so other fields of endeavor can benefit from the new information and understanding.

Generations of people form their lives with one another, build families, and carry on the many facets of society and culture unique to time and place scattered over the face of the planet. They live their lives. You live your life. Our families live their lives as well.

Life goes on. So do countless transactions we manage to do every day. Some are simple – cooking a meal, growing a crop, maintaining a home, cleaning the house, washing the car, and all the rest. Daily chores of life. Unaffected by trump or any other elected official in America. Or Russia, China, or any other nation in the global community.

What we do does influence others, but we don’t label it by cause or by personality. This is not a trump world. It is decidedly not a trump nation, either.

So, trump does not control the news as much as he would like to think he does.

Also important, the news media does not control the news. In fact, they report on trump because he wants them to. And they do. Since they do this, they do not control the news, trump does. And if his nonsense actions are unworthy of public following, then the news media ought not report on such antics. 

There is much more to report on. What is going on in theological circles? What medical breakthroughs are new and exciting? How will the breakthroughs affect you and I in the everyday world? Will school coursework change to recognize society’s needs for more engineering, science and technical research? Will our skill sets change with the times and create wholly new careers? Will citizens adapt readily to the new or will they fall behind.  How much of this is also news?  A lot?  A little?

The reality is we make the news. All of us. Together. If something is going on and we don’t know about it, it still happened. The story needs to get out. We make the news. So let’s report the news. 

The media acts as though the news revolves around trump; it doesn’t; but he wants them to think so.

I guess that leaves the real news and its reporting up to us. It starts with us and ends with us.

So let’s get started.

June 4, 2018ow wHow