(Fictional piece and commentary)

The Setting: An executive office of an International News (muti-media) Channel! Two executives having a private conversation.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s brilliant. Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?”

“You know how ideas are, they’re just suddenly there!”

“So, have you found the person to fill this new position yet?”

“No, I have a few excellent prospects though. But I need to be extremely careful in the selection of this person. He or she will have a lot of control!”

“Well, I can understand that. You’ve settled on the name “Emotional Media Coordinator” then?”

“Yes, has a nice sound to it, don’t you think? This person will single-handedly train the first group of EMC’s Emotional Media Coordinators, whose sole task will be to follow our daily ratings and inform our media centers when they need to change the emotional mix of news being presented.

When the ratings are up they’ll send the message to include some “upbeat and fun” happenings in the news, or perhaps some “new goings on in the science/art etc world. When the ratings begin to drop the Coordinators will send the message to play up the ‘negative news’ . You know, political happenings, disasters, scary things happening, ha, ha, lots of that out there! In the final analysis we will have our thumb on the emotional pulse of our viewers manipulatung their feelings so they’ll want to ‘stay tuned’, as it were!”

“I know we’ve already been doing that, generally speaking, but having a specific group to review, analyse and determine what we broadcast, and when, based on the numbers will really be a boost to our ratings.”

“Yes I’m sure it will. It’ll allow our “people” to “know” the type of content to show as well as how to emotionally present it to the public! This is just excellent.” The future is looking better and better – at least from my view of things – ha, ha, ha, get it … view of things … ha, ha, ha!”

~

This was a piece of fiction. Anyone surmising that this might actually be going on is … well happily entitled to their own opinions! They are your own opinions aren’t they? Well of course they are, Right? And just so you know I’m not biased, News reporters are people too!

~ Thanks for dropping by,

Penny