Media Purists and Relativists

The

We're all Reporters in the 21st Century

It occurs to me that now that I have a smartphone, a YouTube account, and a blog, I am, if I so choose, a news reporter.  As I walk down the streets of Salem, Monmouth, Portland, or Paris, thoughts pass through my mind as I see the human drama play out before me, and if I'm perceptive, I can choose to share my thoughts with the world.  With my iPhone I can film a short video of my take on a touching human interest story that is unfolding before me.  And with the simple push of one button, that is uploaded to my YouTube account.  My mental notes, still photos I take, and perhaps the video I just mentioned, can then be put into a blog in the early hours of the morning and others, across the globe (might as well think big here) can get some highly personalized local news.

All of my students will have blogs this year and last week I even set up blogs for my seven and nine year-olds.  The Digital Natives are telling their story.  When will you?

To switch gears a bit, I'd like to focus tonight on new agencies and their role and responsibility.  A question that came up today was, "Should a news agency show photos of members of the community who have been killed in war"?  I'm very divided on this issue and feel that it reveals the unenviable role of the Fourth Estate.  On the one hand, I am repulsed at the thought of showing photos of dead people at all.  When I was in France, where the media clearly operates under a more extreme (purer?) ethic, I saw images of dead U.S. soldiers as well as dead children in Iraq, and that's one of those images I still  try to get out of my mind.   I personally (and that's the operative word) would never publish photos of dead members of the community.  I feel violated when I see these things and, as a parent, I would be very upset if my children had to see these kinds of images.

And yet . . .

And yet it seems that news agencies operate under a strange code that places truth and facts and the obligation to make powerful information accessible.  Physicians pledge their careers to the preservation of life, and similarly, the Fourth Estate takes a pledge of providing any information that might lead to truth,  no matter how uncomfortable that journey might be.

And so when I return to the question of whether grisley images should be made public, my answer is that I as an individual person would not want those images posted, but it seems that the code of conduct for news agencies dictates that those kinds of images should be published.  And that's the unenviable dilemma the Fourth Estate faces.  Do you hold to your principles and do "what you're supposed to do," or do you allow competing moral imperatives to trump the "law"?

The Morass of Media

So, the morass of media.  The question is, can we escape from this swamp, or has media so influenced us that we will never be the same.  Last night I wrote about teen magazines and the idea that pop stars are not so much people as they are products.  And my concern is that these products create a world--a morass-- that will be nearly impossible for my children to escape from.  If the things that kids talk about are plastic people, how can they help but grow up to become more plastic themselves?  Perhaps that's overstating it a bit, but I do wonder if my kids' tastes will be formed by the media.  If Taylor Swift drives a Mercedes, will they want to do so at some point (I'm a Jaguar man, myself, so this is, indeed, a most disturbing prospect).  And speaking of media molding impressionable minds, what if every magazine and every movie that my children watch shows pop icons drinking Coke and eating McDonald's burgers?  Will this alter their tastes?  Although many would poo poo this idea, I feel that children are influenced by what they see.  Aren't we all?  At the risk of sounding like one of those people from an older generation who feels that society is going to hell in a hand basket, let me say that I wonder if new levels of sophistication in advertising are reaching us on such a fundamental, subconscious level that our tastes and our very psyches will be altered for the duration of our lives. 

The Morass of Media

Today I sat down with an apparently simple task in mind:  to determine what percentage of a teen magazine is content.  We all know that those magazines don't have any content, right?  Although these magazines do have their fair share of advertisements (not any more than Time, though), the amount of space dedicated to content is surprisingly high.  I'd share a few examples of the content with you but, uh, it wasn't exactly memorable stuff (to me, anyway).  Lots of pictures of stars from boy bands and TV shows with comments written in with faux pencil, things like, "Zach is really into girls who wear tight jeans."  Is that content?  If you consider the audience and the purpose of the magazine, yes (sadly).  In trying to determine the percentage of content, my partner and I realized that sometimes there is a fine line between just what is advertising and what is content.  If we hear that "Zach digs pimped out Mercedes SUV's," is that a plug for a product, or is it simply a statement about the kinds of things that Zach likes and his fans are "into"?  And the troubling conclusion that we came to is that readers of teen magazines are so immersed in the cult of consumerism that it is difficult to say just what is content and what is advertising in their magazines.  The people written about in the articles aren't so much human beings as they are products to be consumed and promoted--Hillary Duff, Paris Hilton, and, of course Justin Bieber.  And if all of the "articles" (and I use that term  lightly!) in these magazines deal with products that are promoted, is any of this stuff really content?  Hard to say