The “tunnel people” of Las Vegas were featured on Inside Edition last night (5/28). Yes, it’s an atrocious show on the whole, the breathlessness of the field reporting was unnecessary, and someone should have fact-checked the report closely enough to keep the reporter from erroneously referring to the storm drains as sewers, but even so, it was a surprisingly well-done piece. Inside Edition’s liaison in the storm drains was a photojournalist who had covered them previously and whose commentary was intelligent and decorous. More impressive was the footage of a young man hauling a number of his possessions, including a guitar, through another couple’s living space, which occupied the entire width of their drain between his quarters and the nearest exit to the outside world. This footage conveyed the difficulty of living in the storm drains and the resourcefulness of the residents with a power that still shots would have trouble equaling. The report was half-cocked at times, but it was exactly the kind of serious journalism that should be broadcast more often.  

This is especially true of television broadcasts, which reach an audience that for various reasons simply cannot be reached in writing. Reform becomes much easier and more viable when one is able to get through not only to an engaged minority, but also to the lazy and the disengaged. Merely presenting more or less honest, accurate reporting in lieu of propaganda and sensational tripe is an incremental improvement. It’s one less piece of rubbish distorting the senses of the citizenry.

The effects are subtle, perhaps even imperceptible, but they’re meaningful because their aggregate effects are huge. Nicolae Ceaucescu, for example, tried to propagandize his subjects about the evils of American capitalism by liberally broadcasting Dallas on Romanian state television, but instead he ended up confirming his subjects’ suspicions that he was mismanaging their country to the point of penury, and that he and his wife were why they couldn’t have nice things of the sort enjoyed by scheming Texans. Had he been less tone-deaf, he might have broadcast that other Inside Edition classic from last night, an update on the boy who divorced his parents. 

I knew I had reasons for only watching that crap by accident.