And I do mean sensationalize. Even here in this far northern corner of Europe, Norwegian reporters are getting more and more masterful at whipping up controversy and creating crisis. Rather than turn their backs on folly and those practices so evident on pseudo-journalistic shows like Bill O´Reilley´s No-Spin Zone, Norwegian media seems keen to embrace these questionable hype creation practices.

Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud, studying political debates in conjunction with her doctoral thesis, stated recently in an NRK interview that debate programmes in Norway are staged and sometimes even misleading.

Political debate programs in Norway today, are characteristically very popularized and pretty tabloid. Producers want politicians who step it up a little, without too many reservations, who don´t refer too often to dry resolutions, numbers and statistics. It should be very simple, concrete, and it should pertain to the public.

We get a debate that is often more constructed than it is possible [for us] to be aware of. Journalists want a debate with high temperatures, and politicians know what journalists want, and ensure that their message is formulated in such a way as to get into the studio. — Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud. [ » Read the original interview Debatter kan lure seerne, 30.10.08, NRK.no]

In a speech many years ago, delivered to a crowd of California university students, Michael Crichton went so far as to say that there is no value in following the media coverage of today:

We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. — Michael Crichton [Speech entitled: Why Speculate, April 26, 2002]

Crichton’s speculative intellectual excercise is entertaining and witty (as his writing often was; and we can agree to disagree with him about the lack of evidence for global warming). While President Elect Obama’s honeymoon phase has provided a respite from the biting form of media speculation that reigned for the last decade, but not a reprieve from speculation entirely. As the world anticipates the Obama administration’s installation in January, the speculation is simply of a different character: upbeat and hopeful, like the man himself. (Actually, it is seldom one reads European news coverage and commentary concerning America’s roll and responsibility in the world, that is so harmonious and propitious as that of this last month.)

No one but McCain really envies President Elect Obama the challenges he is facing. The honeymoon will end —as they inevitably do—and when it ends the media climate will be a deciding factor in whether the new administration makes headway or not. Polarization, or the lack of it, will matter a great deal. Crichton put it this way:

Endless presentation of conflict may interfere with genuine issue resolution. There is evidence that the television foodfights not only don’t represent the views of most people-who are not so polarized-but may tend to make resolution of actual disputes more difficult in the real world. At the very least, they obscure the recognition that we resolve disputes every day. Compromise is much easier from relatively central positions than it is from extreme and hostile, conflicting positions.

Whenever the subject comes up, and it may be said, speaking with moderation, that it comes up forty times a day, some one invariably declares, “No, I don´t like cats, I like dogs.” The cognate dichotomous remark, which is equally popular, prevalent, and banal, is “No, I don´t like Dickens, I like Thackery.” As James Branch Cabell ahs conveniently pointed out for all time, “to the philosophical mind it would seem equally sensible to decline to participate in a game of billiards on the ground that one was fond of herring. ” Nevertheless both controversies continue to rage and careless thinkers continue to force Dickens and the cat into categories. The dog-lovers, in the opposition sense ( for it is really possible to care for both dogs and cats, just as it is possible to read “Pendennis” and “Bleak House” with equal delight), say of the soft puss that he is sly and deceitful, thieving and ungrateful, fickle and cruel, a friend to home and not man. From this inconsiderate, and unconsidered, opintion the derogatory and catachrestic adjective “catty” has been derived, and adjective which when used in its ordinarily accepted sense I find particularly abhorrent, for who should be described as catty unless it be some gracious and graceful female, dignified and reserved, redolent of beauty and charm and the mystery of love? The cat-lovers on their side, so ardent, indeed, that in France they have earned the sobriquet of félinophiles enragés, have not been guiltless. Affectionate, intelligent, faithful, tried and true are some of the adjectives they lavish indiscriminately on their darling pets. It would seem, indeed, after reading some of the books, that cats spend their nine lives caring for the sick, saving children from burning buildings …

The rest of the essay is equally as witty, and can be found in the Chapter of One of Van Vechtens book The Tiger in the House from Dorset Press, originally published in 1920.