Is it Live or Memorex?

After accidentally watching a snippet of the television “news show” Nancy Grace, I was shocked to hear a fabricated phone call intended to be an actual call from a menacing killer. It almost slipped by me. First I wondered how her program could have gained access to a private phone call. Blatantly then I remembered past President George W. Bush’s unconstitutional wiretapping legislation. It expired a few times. After Congress let it slip into oblivion, Bush personally contacted wireless phone companies and demanded their records. Pressured by the ruse of the federal government they obliged. Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult for Ms. Grace to call Verizon and ask for a recording of a personal voice mail. It wasn’t a voice mail. It was an actual call. Then I realized it must have been a “dramatization.” These are rampant on television today. Drama is a large portion of television’s programming. The bothering thing was that although many people know shows of her type are meant for entertainment, it blurs the boundaries between actual news reporting and television fodder. For a brief moment I was confused. Was this a real news show, or was it a sitcom? Ms. Grace said the call was authentic. She said it was the actual call. Then a bogus voice over repeated the words of the culprit. It was done so poorly no one could believe it was a real crank call. No one could believe it was a stalker. Was it? The issue in my mind could be representative of the entire media debacle unfolding around us today. Where are the boundaries? There seem to be none as the web appears on phones. Text appears on phones. You can pay your bills with a phone. It seems like almost any human need can be met by cross-platforming any wireless device. Is it a video game? Is it the iTunes Music Store? Many gaming companies’ goal ten years ago was effectively to disguise the boundary between real and cyber. Newspeak. Newspeak. Newspeak. Fabricating the news for political gain. Who can we trust? Who can we believe? I can’t even look at the news anymore. It one more rogue African or Egyption nation launches a rebellion or attempted coup, my head will spin. It is not uncommon, but like television it is a vying for top media time. I thought I never would say it, but Rupert Murdoch’s NewCorp actually upped the bar for news reporting. After lobbying fiercely to regulate Internet news reporting or make it a pay service, annotations of source have begun popping up in news articles online. This is a good thing. The Internet is the bubble of American freedom. Slowly we will see its emancipation quashed by corporate America, but amazingly lawmakers still are protecting its anonymity. Still in my mind I tell myself I can’t believe anything. The “spin” factor is in effect, and I have forgotten it. Mr. Obama says there is no easy fix for rising oil prices. There is. All of the corporate deregulation that has occurred over the last four decades could be reversed. The gouging could be stymied. That’s an easy fix. He must have been referring to the continuing stalemate in our federal government. In the last minutes before a government shutdown, the democrats and republicans reached a compromise. Mr. Obama could not have a government shutdown on his watch. Was that real or was it a “dramatization?”