Several weeks ago while watching Babylon 5 I was surprised to see a
reporter.  They still have TV news and newspapers in the future according
to B5.  This shouldn't be a surprise except that I was so used to Star
Trek that I have come to accept the absence of the media in the future. 

In the present on earth, we have economists, accountants, sales people,
marketing people, tax collectors, business owners, and lots of other such
people that Roddenberry seems to have found distasteful.  The problem is
that in reality, people's needs and wants are infinite, while the
resources required to satisfy those needs and wants are limited. The above
mentioned people are needed to help a capitalist society allocate scarce
resources among unlimited demands.  

So Earth according to Trek is perfect communism.  The communist
expirements of the present did not work because people were not willing or
able to limit their needs and wants in such a way that everyone
could be satisfied by the limited resources.  In the future according to
Trek, technology has improved so much that the limits on resources are no
longer significant, so communism can work.

Most of the sociological differences between the Trek universe and our own
that I can think of can be traced back to the fact that resources are
nearly unlimited and communism has been successfully implemented.

But in this world where resources are nearly unlimited, information seems to
be even less limited!  The purpose served by the media today is to help
people sort out useful information and permit you to ignore a lot of stuff
without feeling like you're missing much.  So how can people in Trek get
along without the media?  Where do they get their information from?  What
serves as the "fourth estate" keeping an eye on the government?

15 responses total.

Don't forget the second estate (or was it the first?) too - religion.
Trek has only distasteful mentions of religion (fanatics, etc.), and
almost never any mention of the religions that exist today on earth.
Babylon 5 has impressed me as the first sci-fi TV series to break
with that unwritten rule.`

Second Estate?  I thought journalism was the 4th estate after the three
branches of Government.  Anyway...

Yes, the earth people on trek have no religion (except perhaps for
communism).  But this ideal communist view of the universe does not really
hold with respect to DS9 and Bajor.  They have religion and they don't
have the nearly unlimited resourses of the humans.  Yet they still have no
journalists we've seen.

I don't understand how the absence of capitalism means communism.
Couldn't there be some as yet unthought system implemented?  After
all they have come through all those wars according to Q, couldn't
a different system have evolved from that than the two mentioned?

Who is your top candidate on board the Enterprise for underground
newsletter/newspaper (electronic or otherwise) publisher?  I figure
Data would probably be one to try this given his interest in human
interaction and history...

The "3 Estates" of the traditional French political structure were
the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.  You're right about Bajor,
Jeff, I'd forgotten we'd explored religion there with only mixed
negativity.  I'd guess that Riker would be the most likely to run
an underground paper.  He always seems to change his personality
when he's off-duty.

Even more important than the way in which religion is 
portrayed in the TREK universe (i.e. almost always negative) is the
question of WHO is religious.  Bajorans and Klingons are allowed to be
religious to varying degrees, but they are also portrayed as being
less "sophisticated" than Humans.  Mark, have ANY
currently practised religiouns been mentionned in any TREK incarnation?
I don't recall seein any.

I don't think so.  Old Trek was less politically correct than New Trek,
so occasionally they'd say things like "You have acted against the laws
of God and man" (_The Ultimate Computer_), but I never recall hearing
that anyone was a Christian, or a Jew, or anything like that.  One got
the feeling that religion died out at some point, because humans no
longer needed it.

scientific knowledge often halts religious belief. this could mean science is
bad or that as we learn we see the unlikelyhood of god. roddenberry may simply
have thought that religion was silly and will die by the 24th century. or maybe
he didn't want to be mean by sugesting that christianity was the true religion,
as its existence so far in the future would lend to its credibility.

My opinion is that since Earth religions don't deal well (at all?) with the
existence of beings on other worlds, the Trek creators decided to just avoid
the whole topic altogether.

Does anyone remember the mini-series "V"?  You know, the reptile creatures
masquerading in human skin, seeming benevolent, but looking for food?
Mark Singer et al?  Anyway, when the young woman got impregnated by one of
the V-guys, and gave birth to a human-looking girl, and a reptilian thing
that died, a priest approached the V commandress about spreading the gospel
to the V-folks, since the ability to have offspring from both races proved
that the V-folks were also God's children.

V? V was absolute complete drek.

proof that for priests, ah, forget it

Interesting...I saw an episode tonight called "Sub Rosa" (it's, I think,
a re-run from this season).  Anyway, it opens with a funeral, where
an alien priest (?) does the whole "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" bit,
so maybe there are still religious people (the funeral was for a relative
of  Dr. Crusher).

I think the problem w/ religion in Trek is that there are so many
competing for people's faiths; where the Bajorans and Klingons may have come
to terms with a worldwide religion, humans have not (or else, as fuz
suggested, roddenberry didn't want to promote one over any other).

As for what happened to journalists, I don't know.  But I disagree
w/ saying that the purpose of media is to "help sort out useful information."
I'm with the school that thinks the media is merely a tool of (insert
government/big business/the CIA)...meaning that the media often offers
us a stilted and highly biased picture of "current events" (instead of the
"objective" opinion were led to believe they offer...just as an example,
I found it interesting that, when Malice Green was killed, Detroit papers
'noted that it occurred in a neighborhood where several incidents of police
brutality had occurred; yet when picked up by the national news, it was made
out to be a highly irregular incident).

Anyway, I'm getting away from the subject...information seems to be readily
availaable for anyone who wants it...there is probably some "official"
starfleet news service, since (if we assume the federation is more communist
than capitalist)there is no longer any need for competing newspapers to
"scoop" stories.

What I'm interested in, if there is some sort of Starfleet Wire Service,
is who controls it and what information gets held out.  There was another
episode this season (can't think of the title) where the Enterprise retrieves
some sort of "phasing cloak."  Starfleet Intelligence had covered it up; I 
wonder how much influence Starfleet Intelligence has on the Federation.

Yeah, there have been quite a few mentions of Star Fleet Intelligence
lately; I wonder what their role is, too.

In spite of all kinds of information being available at the touch
of a button (or a holler to "Computer"), I still think there is a
need for interpretation and good fact-telling.  If nothing else, there
are bound to be people who would not like their information to be
*totally* filtered by the government/big business/whatever passes for
the CIA/etc.  Present-day journalists are not entirely tools of the
state...otherwise there would be no need for gag orders.  Granted they
are quite sensationalistic (even "yellow"), but the press is a necessary
part of a free society.  I'd expect the same to hold true in the future.

i would imagine starfleet intelligence is just the pentagon of 2550 (or
whatever) and is not solely espionage. who knows. remember that starfleet does
not equal federation. starfleet is just the gov't owned ships-- science and
battle based.

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