Undoubtedly, the greatest fear of
a consumer of any 24-hour news channel is that “something important or
relevant” will be missed while their attention is focused on the talking head
above. Wikipedia calls it a News Ticker;
named after the Ticker Tape which functioned as an early method of relaying
stock prices over telegraph lines, and on some occasions, as confetti to
celebrate something patriotic or jingoistic.- - - Nowadays, tossing a News
Ticker out the window might be cause serious harm, or even better, an
acknowledgement across an actual News
Ticker that a misguided American tossed his/her flat-screen television out
of their window in an attempt to replicate a Ticker Tape Parade. The News Ticker – the joint-stock effort of
bourgeoisie Media corporations to prey on the attention of concerned citizens,
the innocent appearance of true yet unreal factums of news scrolling screens,
the quantification of quality, the anti-thesis of critical thought, the
nonchalant text that still exists for fear of actual breaking news.- - - Actual
news did break on September 11, 2001 and with it the United States public would
never again be able to turn to a US News Outlet without a scrolling marquee at
the bottom of the screen vying for attention with the presence of at least one
news anchor including audio commentary, cuts to sequences of on-the-scene
reporting or stock footage, picture-in-picture topic headings and elaborate new
rooms sets sometimes complete with random news seeking minions on computers in
the background. US News Media outlets
have more components than a Dadaist collage, but unlike the short-lived Dadaists,
US News Media is on the scene-of-whatever until the US Power Grid collapses.- -
- During the 9/11 terror attacks, people turning on the television read that
the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were struck by airplanes. The purpose was to relay serious information
in a time of heightened emotional turmoil for the country at large. The simulated ticker tape at the bottom of
the television screen crossed the line from portraying sports scores to
updating the US population when the terrorists crossed the line and attacked
the structures of US hegemony on US soil.
Since that day, the United States domestic surveillance practices,
foreign policy in the Middle East, and News Media aesthetics would never be the
same. Wires would be tapped. Shock and awe would be enacted. And the US News Media would naturalize the
myth of relevancy and hypermediacy right into the widescreen HD collective
consciousness of concerned citizens all over the country. - - - “Wait, what did
it say at the bottom of the screen?” “I
don’t know. Wait for it to come around
again.” “Oh, okay.” Viewer
nervously tries to focus on the news anchor while keeping his eye on the News
Ticker to no avail. Eventually changes the channel. - - - The US News Media
by flooding the public with news is creating a dynamo of facts, opinions,
speculations, and popular culture references that are about as fleeting as the
text at the bottom of the screen. News
comes and news goes, and wars happen and people help each other out and people
harm each other, and corporations create jobs, and the liberals and the
conservatives need to agree for the better of the country, and the United
States is a great place for all people and has been for all of history, and
look how clean the news anchors are.
“Everything is as it should be,” says the News Corporations through the
omnipresent News Ticker. - - - The News Ticker is the Signifier. What is signified is text relaying factums
about things going on in the world or in the News Room. The Sign simply reads: Contemporary News Source. But as Roland Barthes suggest, myth suggests
a secondary meaning, in a meta-language with insidious status-quo supporting
motivations. The hypermediated aesthetic
of constant US News Media is the Signifier.
What is Signified is the inconsequential approach to relaying world
events as natural, superficial happenings.
The Sign points to a naturalization of all contemporary world events
from celebrities in rehab to predator drones racking up an inhuman number of
confirmed kills of enemies of the state as well as collateral damage. The Sign is a record of facts, and a refusal
for explanation.
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