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Going deeper and asking why.
By Jared | March 24, 2008
It’s fairly easy to just rave on about this or that being wrong with society. It’s even easier to go picking through news stories and columns like a sniper, then tearing them apart and putting them back together again. (It’s also rather fun, and, yes, it can be more than a little instructive.)
Frankly, that’s exactly what journalism is becoming today—a “take it apart and put it back together again” discipline in which the journalist’s job is to pick out the most interesting bit of news and re-publish it with a new headline and a new twist, possibly a few statistics, and a bit of amusing commentary.
The journalist’s job is to make sure what he’s telling you is true. “Just the facts, man” journalism is about calling your sources, making notes, and making sure there really IS a body in the morgue to prove that the crime was committed.
Or it was. Times are changing. The internet has provided an information glut. Yes, local newspaper reporters are called to report on local situations. That IS how the news first gets into circulation most of the time, and it probably always will be. After the local reporter does his job, the “national news media” generally pick up these stories and run with them. Journalism is becoming a discipline of selection.
I don’t mean to belabor this point, but it has a great deal to do with what I hope to do next at The Honest Truth Online, so bear with me for a moment.
The media are important because they act as a lens to focus the people’s attention. Take my dad as an example. My dad builds machinery for a living. He has a family. He has bills to pay. He has to worry about flat tires and the neighbor’s dogs and property taxes. He’s got a life that is, more or less, analogous to everyone else’s.
My dad has only a very small percentage of his time to spend on national (or even local) news. Thus, whatever news source he reads/watches/listens to determines the following: 1. What he knows about national news. 2. What he considers important. 3. What political parties/charities he supports, how he votes, what he buys for his family, whether he can afford a new house/car/boat, etc.
The media are important because they determine what we know about the world and, to an extent, how we approach everything around us. (If interest rates are going up, you want to know about it, right? If the price of oil goes up, gas prices go up. We are so used to these things that we don’t even think about them anymore.)
There are academics somewhere, I’m sure, who study the media, but I’ve yet to see anyone in the media itself do a systematic, in-depth study of what drives politics (and by extension the rest of society) on a nuts and bolts level.
The subject is enormous, but I think it is possible to learn something from a good, honest try. In the interest of this, I’ll be starting several series of posts all focusing on the same question and building on one another. I have several areas to explore.
1. Why does it matter: What effect does this have on Joe American? How does the chain of events work?
2. Examine the worldview: What are they saying? Ok, Why are they asking those questions? And why are they looking in that direction for their answers?
3. Show me where it fits: Use contemporary examples, pulled from across the internet and other media to illustrate.
Topics: Current Affairs, Politics, Principles, Societal Problems |