Baltimore Light Rail outside Camden Yards (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Have you ever had the experience of watching a new episode of a TV show and having the strong feeling that you have seen it before? No, I'm not talking about your "sixth sense" or anything as silly as that. I don't mean that you've actually seen that particular episode before (it is new, remember); I mean that it feels so incredibly derivative that the story line was likely borrowed from another show you previously watched. It doesn't have to rise to the level of plagiarism for you to feel like you are watching something familiar. If you watch a lot of sitcoms, I'm sure you can relate. In my experience, they tend to recycle story lines fairly often.
If you are anything like me, you do not find this terribly appealing. Unless you are already invested in the newer show or it manages to put some sort of clever spin on the old story line, you probably find it less enjoyable once you recognize how derivative it is. You might even find yourself feeling bored and changing the channel.
The question I'd like to consider for this post is whether we have similar reactions to important news stories when the manner in which they are presented and/or how the public reacts to them becomes so highly scripted that we feel like we've seen it all before. I think such scripts are far more common when it comes to the news than we see for entertainment media. I also think that there is a significant downside in that the prevalence of such scripts fuels apathy and maintains the status quo.