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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Home News Latest Stories OSF courtyard redesign gets rave reviews SOU field trip uncovers body of Klamath Falls fugitive What are you doing on Super Bowl Sunday? Read the Tidings online for free Police reports Education Learning on the job AHS speech and debate team headed north Willow Wind inquiry forms now available District to host parent meeting A connection between Charlie Hebdo, MLK and the classroom Environment Grant will help restore 'legacy' oak habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California Mt. Ashland Ski Area crew dips to five Mt. 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SOU field trip uncovers body of Klamath Falls fugitive ... Amid rising scrutiny, governor says fiancee won't have role in administration ... Herb Rothschild Jr: Thoughts on the drug war ... SOU field trip uncovers body of Klamath Falls fugitive ... Amid rising scrutiny, governor says fiancee won't have role in administration ... COMMENTARY Chris Honoré: Modern media: the unreliable narrator Comment By Chris Honoré DailyTidings.com By Chris Honoré Posted Jan. 26, 2015 @ 12:01 am By Chris Honoré Posted Jan. 26, 2015 @ 12:01 am What do you think? --> Have an opinion on this issue? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter. » Read more X What do you think? Have an opinion on this issue? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter. » Social News In an essay in the New York Times Magazine, Steve Almond wrote what has proven to be a prescient and insightful piece, titled, “Once Upon a Time, There Was a Person Who Said, ‘Once Upon a Time.’ ” Almond writes, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was uttered by a storyteller. His myths and histories offered a unified version of our origins, the codes by which we should live and our mortal fate. Eventually these stories were preserved, duplicated and made portable as written works.” Almond goes on to say, “The teller was supplanted by the writer who, in an effort to bridge the gap between him and his audience, deployed a figure called the narrator. As literature sought to reckon with the growing complexity of human affairs, writers relied on this figure more and more.” Narrators, Almond points out, “establish setting, supply vital background and push the plot ahead. Readers can thus experience the interior lives of characters while also absorbing broader insights into human nature. They also draw back to offer lengthy disquisitions that yield broader insights into human nature.” Literature, Almond insists, doesn’t just awaken readers’ sympathies, it “enlarges our moral imaginations, offers a depiction of the world, and helps us clarify our role in it.” I would include newspapers and journals in this definition. But with the rise of visual media, we are no longer collaborators in the writer’s narrative. Where once we were called upon to imagine the world as described, and wrestle with its vagaries and uncertainties, today we are content to be passive viewers of vivid images that call only for our reaction. To extrapolate from Almond’s essay, we are offered very little exposition or interpretation in today’s electronic media. Television news yields mere sound bites of events with the briefest analysis, generally filtered through a political framework. In other words, the reliable narrator is absent, if only in what is not explicated. How do we understand the existence and the brutality of ISIS without context, something that would take too long for a medium constructed for a short attention span? How can we ever begin to comprehend what occurred in Paris — provoked, we’re told, because of “blasphemous” depictions of Mohammed? There has to be more. How to comprehend the killing of 17 people over a cartoon? Is it simply a war waged against modernity, buttressed by pure murderous intolerance covered with the thinnest patina of religiosity? Or is it a familiar yet ultimately inexplicable pathology (in some instances collective) that we have observed not only in Pakistan, where the Taliban killed some 148 school children, but in Sandy Hook and Aurora and Santa Barbara, to name just a few? How can we fathom the existence of a ruthless band of thugs called Boko Haram that has kidnapped and killed thousands and only recently slaughtered 2,000 people in Baga, in northern Nigeria, at the same time the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo was covered in blood (wasn’t there a moral equivalency that was all but ignored?). As Almond points out, the Internet (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.) has not helped us manage the complexities of the world. Nor has ubiquitous 24/7 news television. And certainly not what are deceptively called “reality shows.” I would argue that one of the last places we can look for analysis and deep understanding is in what we still call “the press,” where print journalists, essayists, artists, cartoonists and academics still attempt to make sense of the human condition in all its vagaries. While we may not always believe that the writers or political cartoonists are reliable narrators, we are still asked to ponder causation and meaning and our place in the world. To lose the Fourth Estate, as it’s also referred to, would represent an enormous loss (as would the novel as an art form). As Almond comments, “On a grand scale, we’ve traded perspective for immediacy, depth for speed, emotion for sensation, the panoramic vision of a narrator for a series of bright beckoning keyholes.” Chris Honoré lives in Ashland. By Chris Honoré DailyTidings.com By Chris Honoré Posted Jan. 26, 2015 @ 12:01 am » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. calendar Connect with DailyTidings.com Facebook Twitter RSS Back to top Reader Services Reader Services home Subscriptions Subscriber controls Contact us Submissions Photos Events Letters to the editor Corrections Alerts Email alerts RSS feeds Text Alerts Advertise Media Kit Home Products and services Ad rates Advertising contacts Mail Tribune Daily Tidings The Nickel Shop Our Valley Blogs Stay Informed Email newsletter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Your privacy is important, read our privacy policy. © Copyright 2015 Local Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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