Giorgio: The Bad News Bears

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

As a member of the local media, I find myself viewing and reading a variety of national & local websites and social media outlets, including blogs and Facebook. There appears to be a recurrent theme recently on some of these blogs, which happen to be the more successful ones. The tenor is anger and an anti-everything bias. It is clear that anger sells and anger about government sells the most. Several years ago, right after President Obama, was elected, the TEA Party tapped into this anger with success. They were able to elect a few of their favorites to the United States Senate, including Scott Brown and Ted Cruz.

While the TEA Party is fading, the anger lingers. Government is a large and an easy target for most of us. Who doesn’t like to make fun of politicians? Liberals make fun of conservatives and the opposite is also true. Hell, Donald Trump has every writer in America salivating at the prospect of his miscues and bombastic style.

There seems, recently, to be an explosion of anti-government and anti people blogs and web sites. I remember the old chestnut “That bad news travels around the world, before good news leaves the house.” So I understand the bad news concept or as some TV stations have claimed, ”If it bleeds, it leads”.

On Monday night, Worcester Mayor Joe Petty mentioned this in his remarks at the Department of Justice sponsored seminars in Worcester. He took on anonymous bloggers and websites that run the city down.

I believe in free speech, but what do we do when free speech becomes hateful speech? Sometimes people hide behind anonymity because they can say things that they wouldn’t say “in polite company”. An old rule I learned was that if you are afraid or embossed to see your remarks on the front page of the New York Times, simply don’t say it.

I have also noticed that since the Telegram & Gazette has required people who post comments about articles, to use their real names that the traffic on their website has dropped dramatically. There had been rumors for years, that a few people were writing comments, using several different names.

I guess everyone feels better, if the other guy is being denigrated or run down. But why is that? Why do some people derive pleasure from hurting others?

I understand running down government from a marketing perspective. One of Ronald Regan’s best throw away lines was” I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

As I said, anger sells. All of us are angry about something. Maybe our garbage doesn’t get picked up once or there is loud music coming from a park or we get stopped for going through a red light.

Print Both Good & Bad, Not Just One

We have a rich tradition of satire in this country. Most of it is funny. But there is no need to cross a line and become hurtful to people.

I am not advocating just printing good news. But, let’s not just print bad news all the time. There has to be something good going on around here or we wouldn’t have our businesses here or live here. That is unless we are self destructive.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m here for the long haul, because I truly believe that we have great potential. Let’s stop with the Bad News Bears.