Jonathan Freedland has a great edition of "The Long View", the BBC Radio show that draws historical parallels. He proposes the analogy between the use of relics to bind the 9th century Carolingian empire, and the trouble the Church gets into over their authenticity, with the current trouble that broadcast media have over the "reality" of documentaries, reality shows and games. The parallel works on many levels, and although it is treated lightly, the parallels between the media and the Church I think are very powerful: they are the nationally (or imperially) binding institutions, they create the unity ... but their authority gets challenged from within, on their own terms - they are trapped by their own contradictions.
Peter Bazalgette, UK importer of Big Brother, tries to claim that the crisis in trust is overblown, that it is the middle-class, middle aged viewers who both worry about authenticisty and truth, and don't know how to assess it anymore. Anyone born into the digital age, he suggests, knows that representation is manipulable and manipulated, they know that media is fiction. They are not being deceived that media is delivering credibility, so there is no crisis of trust.
Fine, up to the last inference. If we end up in state where everyone knows nothing is to be believed, surely that is precisely a crisis of trust.
