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Media Series: Post 2–Societal Direction, How medias’ focus determines what WE see.
By Jared | April 20, 2008
What is important today? Is it Brittany Spears’ pregnancy? Is it the war in Iraq? Is it another political scandal? Who determines what is important? We know simply from observation that it is “the media” that determines what is foremost in the national consciousness. Who determines what SHOULD be important?
Fine, but who determines what SHOULD be important? That isn’t as simple a question as you may think. If you’re like me, you might answer “God determines that.” There are any number of possible answers, but the fact is, we judge what SHOULD be important based on what we know now that IS important.
Thinking outside the box is fine and good, but what do you do when your only point of reference is the box itself? No matter what you do, the filter through which you see the world is going to shape the way you think about the world, if only because you have to start SOMEWHERE.
The media has its traditions and its directions just like any other social group does, and, by and large, people are not willing to break with what they know and have always known. Imagine a great ship on the ocean. It has momentum going straight ahead. Turning it around isn’t just a matter of stopping it and making it move another way. There is a huge weight of metal, of screws and rivets and sheet metal and bulkheads and people involved. If you bring the ship instantly to a dead stop, it will literally tear itself apart from stress.
To further complicate matters, every single passenger helps to determine the direction, (imagine an ocean liner in which every passenger has a set of bicycle pedals and a steering handle.) Every person has his own view of what should and should not be reported, and each one gets to decide what he does or does not include in a story.
Historically, the media tends to ride the left edge of society. (This is another subject for another time. The reasons are a little hard to get a grasp on.)
This can be a serious problem, because the media has a major role in determining what everyone in America’s “box” looks like. Take, for example, The Honest Truth. We definitely think outside the mainstream media’s box, but when all of society is already being told where to focus, it takes a massive amount of work to shift that attitude, even a fraction…and we, too, suffer from the pull of the media’s collective pointing.
Also keep in mind how much time Americans spend with media. Far more of our time is spent every day taking in either entertainment or news than ever before. That means the effect of this draw is even more pronounced…and we have to work even harder at correcting it.
Topics: Current Affairs, Societal Problems |