ideas: from people

The importance of ideas

“Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.”

Those are the words of pioneering American newsman Edward R. Murrow. I love the quote, and his many others like it. It may sound a particularly high-minded agenda for what will inevitably be another inconsequential blog-of-consciousness. But I reckon it’s a pretty good place to start.

When I had the idea of starting a body of cyber-work – a revelation of not significant originality, to be sure – I wanted to build it around the idea of engagement with the world around us. I pride myself on being engaged; as head-over-heels attracted as I am to others who are similarly connected.

“Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or colour, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.”

He was talking about television, but he may as well have been talking about western society generally. In fact, a half-century has passed since Murrow gave that speech in 1958. Decadence, escapism and insulation: how prophetic.

This will be a blog of ideas, big and small. They won’t all be particularly profound, though with any luck some will. A lot of it won’t be in any way serious, though much of it will be. There won’t be any one theme in content (media will be a particular focus), though a fairly loose narrative will emerge to keep like-minded folk engaged. Nor will the ideas come from any platform of specialist knowledge or expertise; like most journalists I rightly claim to be ignorant in almost everything.

“I am not here talking about editorialising but about straightaway exposition as direct, unadorned and impartial as fallible human beings can make it. Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. Let us dream to the extent of saying that on a given Sunday night the time normally occupied by Ed Sullivan is given over to a clinical survey of the state of American education, and a week or two later the time normally used by Steve Allen is devoted to a thoroughgoing study of American policy in the Middle East. Would the corporate image of their respective sponsors be damaged? Would the stockholders rise up in their wrath and complain? Would anything happen other than that a few million people would have received a little illumination on subjects that may well determine the future of this country…”

They will be the thoughts of a media junkie. I’m fascinated by the operations and politics of media, the new technology in delivery and fragmenting of audiences, the role of news media and professional journalists now and into the future, in how public policy and the game of politics is shaped by the media, and yes in the celebrity of media and our shared pop cultural pursuits (there are plenty of those, and reviews will be forthcoming). I have very romantic notions of the role of traditional media and whatever ‘serious journalism’ now means, and fairly idealistic ideas of how a world which puts its people and environment first should work. That may be the naivety of youth, it may make me some sort of bleeding-heart liberal, in which so it is unapologetic.

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.”

Wires and lights in a box: he was talking of television again, but could have been describing web media or whatever technology gives us in the future. In some ways I feel like I’ve only begun to discover this brave new interactive world. For every demented Britney Spears sympathiser on You Tube is a piece of work that truly promotes ideas and extends the debate. I hope to be an ever-so-tiny part of that. That is, after all, where the war is won.

As Murrow said to open his 1958 speech attacking the dumbing-down of news media (as brilliantly dramatised in George Clooney’s Goodnight and Good Luck):

“This just might do nobody any good.”

Certainly true of this little experiment. But for a simply curious and engaged member of the world wide web, it may be cathartic even if nobody is reading.

© 2009 importance of ideas….