“Bread and Circus,” the New Media by carlos matías
Critical thinking “towards” the media in the United States is growing at the same rate as critical thinking “of” the media towards the established power is declining.
The growing distrust of the mass media stems from its political polarization, which distorts its view of reality. The population doubts the information it receives, due to the discrediting of the press and the difficulty of discerning between truth and lies, in an environment of misinformation and fake news that is easily and quickly spread on social media.
Republican voters in the United States have a very unfavorable view of the media and believe that it damages democracy. Americans in general (regardless of their ideology) distrust the media because of its political bias.
The internet has caused a crisis in the media and traditional journalism. A third of local newspapers in this country have disappeared, creating “information gaps” and eroding the quality of the information still available to the public.
All of this demonstrates the growing need for “critical thinking” to differentiate between hoaxes and reality, and for greater rigor and independence from the mass media.
Unfortunately, the opposite phenomenon is occurring. In the Roman Empire, the Caesars and rulers decreed “Panem et circenses” (“Bread and circuses”) to keep the crowds calm and docile, providing basic food and mass entertainment to distract them from deeper problems. And today, 21 centuries later, we are still in the same situation, with an abundance of “media noise,” that is, an excess of entertainment (much of it of dubious taste and poor quality) and false controversies that serve as authentic “smokescreens” for the real problems and crises of values in today’s society. We are a highly technified society that is being prevented from simply stopping to think.
