Looking through the Socratic Seminar questions forThe Fountainhead, I saw a question I don't think was discussed very much in class. The question asks what is revealed about the media in the novel. The first thing I think of when I think of the media in The Fountainhead is the Banner and it's owner, Gail Wynand. The purpose of the Banner is to give the people the stories and the news that they want to hear. An enormous number of copies of the Banner are sold daily, until Wynand begins trying to promote Howard Roark. Even though Wynand's paper was very popular before, sales of the Banner drop dramatically, and the public begins to think of Wynand and the Banner as a joke. Wynand began talking about the greatness of Howard Roark, which is not an opinion shared by most people in the novel. The public does not want to hear about Roark, and so they refuse to listen, they refuse to buy the Banner.
I think that telling people only what they want to hear is definitely an idea present in contemporary media. There is an insane amount of gossipy entertainment websites, television shows, and magazines today. It's impossible to flip through channels on tv, browse the web, or even just go through the check-out line at a grocery store without seeing or hearing about some sort of scandalous gossip. I am disgusted by the "latest, juciest gossip" reported on these tv shows and in these magazines- who hooked up with who, who shouldn't be wearing a bikini. But whether we want to aknowledge it or not, the goal of the media is to make money- which means making the audience happy, which means telling people what they want to hear. So, while I do think that what the media reports can be silly and shallow, I suppose the media industry is just another business, trying to make money. In my mind, the real people at fault here are the ones who actually care about which celebrity looks fat, and other similar, stupid stories.