I’M LYING IN BED NOW
—from Poets Respond
January 31, 2023
__________
Ron Riekki: “I hate the news. I refuse to watch it, at least American news. I’ll watch the BBC, France 24 en direct, DW, CNA. CBC, yes, all of those and more, but American news, to me, honestly, feels like a person choosing which of the two types of brainwashing they want to voluntarily be exposed to. My father had one of the American news stations on and they had repeated their headline all day and then repeated the news story all day, with an incredible repetition. It wasn’t Fox News, but I do remember someone telling me that someone high up at Fox realized that all you have to do is repeat a story enough times and people will believe anything. It feels like all of the American news channels are utilizing those same elements of Fox News now, so none of it feels like actual news. When the main story is another solution-less focus on a high-profile mass shooting followed by a light ‘news’ story on a singer signed to the same company that owns that news show, it feels like, well, I’m over-explaining the poem. It was written after my father had an American news channel on and it felt like every second was spectacular manipulation. A friend of mine told me he used to work in ‘news,’ that they sent him to the house of a person where something horrific had just happened to them. I won’t say what, but they wanted an interview, even if they could just get the person slamming the door in my friend’s face. They could air that. My friend said he got sick to his stomach and couldn’t do it, went back and quit journalism forever, on the spot, even though he’d spent four years getting a degree in it. I wonder if we can’t expect more of the news than what we’re getting and if the whole American conversation could actually become complex, with different points of view allowed to be expressed, without pretending at all times like there are only two views.” (web)
Read by Betsy Baker
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