Inform or Influence

No spoilers here.                                                                

Before the Fall
by Noah Hawley

Faith Flaherty's review

really liked it

bookshelves: fiction

Noah Hawley's novel, Before the Fall, is about the news media and questions the role of journalism. Ask yourself if you watch the news to be informed or to be entertained. Why can't it be both? Because they're two different genres that most of the time don't gel together and trying to do both too often leads to sensationalism.

The storyline of Before the Fall involves a plane crash where only two characters survive. The novel will explain who is who and why they are on this particular plane at this particular moment in time. Because the people on that plane are high profile millionaires the media descends upon the story like the Pharisees upon Christ.

Once the facts of the incident are known, the news starts to speculate and influence the public. The hero who saved a four-year child by swimming all night with a dislocated shoulder is vilified. The reader will see our hero's stock plummet due to the machinations of a journalist and his news outlet.

It's painful to read.

But it's not the whole story. Our hero doesn't cave. He gives as much as he's gotten. He's the moral example of how to behave. (There is literally no explicit sex scenes.) Sex, money, and fame are not important. Children are. And saving and protecting a child defines heroism.

Adult Bullying

Another sad tale of bullying.  However, this is adult bullying.  Lamentable as this is, that isn't my focus on this post.  I'd like to call your attention (again) to the role of communication, namely the media.

See http://theonetruefaith-faith.blogspot.com/2010/09/media-manipulation.html

and http://theonetruefaith-faith.blogspot.com/2010/09/partisan-politics.html

concluding with http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20100928.htm#head3

These links tell the depressing tale of misinformation perpetrated by various communication sources.  In the case of Robert Oscar Lopez, he has been wrongfully labelled and maligned, by various people spreading hate and fear through letters and articles in various media.  Mr. Lopez is the adopted son of two lesbians.  He writes of how difficult this made his childhood.  Because of this, he is labelled anti-gay.  Because he is not gay, himself, he has been labelled bi-sexual, and as such, a pervert.  

He can't do anything right.  People with their personal agendas attack him and it has come to the point of hindering his career.  Now I see where besides spreading misinformation, communication can be considered bullying. 

 Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.  And certainly, speak only the truth.