Friday, 23rd October 2009
Are we being misinformed?
Experience has shown me that readers of this blog do not comment whenever I write about the media. I am not deterred. So, from time to time, I still visit the subject hoping that people read what I write even if they do not comment about it.
I think that the media are too important a subject to be ignored by commentators. Besides, I think I know something about the subject and can help people better understand and manage this greatest phenomenon of contemporary culture.
This time I take my cue from two interesting conferences about the subject I attended in the last two weeks. One conference looked at the phenomenon from the perspective of the news industry while the second looked at it from the perspective of users.
The first conference was held on October 15, 16. Titled "News Exchange: A survival guide for the News Industry", the conference was organized by the European Broadcasting Union in collaboration with PBS Ltd. Our national broadcaster is continually being criticized (sometimes fairly, other times very unfairly) but hardly anyone sings its praises when occasion demands it.
This was such an occasion.
PBS are to be lauded for a fantastic conference. Well done! But let's look at the beef, especially from the perspective of us media users.
The first and the concluding sessions set the tone and established the flavour. Tim Marshall, the Foreign Affairs Editor of Sky News, led a panel that simulated a newsroom during a particular busy day. The panel was made of journalists from CNN, NOS, Bloomberg and a web editor. Editorial and ethical issues were discussed while reviewing the fictitious imminent emergency landing of an airplane, an announcement on the Wall Street Journal blog of a financial scandal greater than Madoff's, a wikepedia insertion alleging malpractice by the airline company, the intervention of the advertising manager, the circulation of photos indicating possible sabotage, etc.
How are the traditional media (or the 20th century media, as Tim Marshall cynically called them) facing the challenge of the 21st century or digital media? Is being first a greater value that being correct?
Given that Tweeter and the other social networks publish the news as soon as they have it, should television and radio do the same? Do we expect them to check and double check? Or would we accuse them of hiding something if they are not the first with the news? How does all this affect us users?
During the session Tim Marshall played with our emotions, sense of judgment and journalistic instinct of striking a scoop. At the end it happened that the allegations about the airline company were false, the web page of the Wall Street Journal was a zombie and the photograph was a manipulation of Photoshop.
It turned out that the guy from the new media continuously took a very cowboyish attitude to publishing the news while the journalists from TV were generally very prudent.
It seems that the latter media are slower but surer means of information, though the valid contribution of the social networks should not be ignored. In fact, on several instances it was essential and very important.
Discerning use is, probably, the name of the game.
Towards the end of the conference Roland Schatz, the President of Media Tenor International, showed us the inherent dangers of the commercialized media systems.
His organization researched the coverage of the financial downturn or perhaps better, financial catastrophe. Basing themselves on the same corpus of facts the American media and the German media were giving us readers, viewers and listeners radically different pictures of the situation, he said. (In Malta some still marvel how and why our media give us different pictures of the same local situations!)
He showed how the media were creating panic by using the word recession even though the economic situation did not warrant the use of that word. He showed how industries in distress made the headlines while industries that were progressing never made the news bulletins.
The result: people were being misinformed and media coverage is - at least partly - to blame for the fracas. There is so much news out there that it is not always possible to know what's true or not; what is reliable and what is not. There is a lot of manipulation, bias, slanted news and sensational items. Audiences have the duty to be aware and also to look at different sources. The presentation of Schatz clearly manifested our vulnerability when faced by the media.
This brings me to the second conference that I am attending while writing this blog. I am presently (October 23) at Bellaria in north Italy. I am attending the European congress on media literacy. There are many definitions and descriptions of media literacy or media education. In simple terms one can say that media education is a means of empowering people by changing them from media users into media partners i.e. persons who are in control of their media use which is for them an occasion for enjoyment and information, among other things.
Malta has been at the forefront of media education movement and the European Commission has acknowledged our country as one of the small number of European countries which has had media education on their curricula for many years. Media education is not a movement to rubbish the media or to get people away from the media. Media education does nothing of the sort.
However, media education help people enhance their enjoyment of media use which should help them be better citizens and human persons. The basic premise of what we do can be thus summerised: If someone lives by the sea it is better to teach him/her to swim than trying to build a wall around the sea.
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It feels like a time bomb, being shifted from one place to another in the hope that one will find a place where to dump it where it can cause the least damage. The fact is that had we not devised the time bomb in the first place there would be no need to dump it anywhere.
I hope I am not misunderstood as to the merits of the internet for it is truly a marvel but I feel that certain fields should have been more controlled and not made available to everyone.
To make matters worse, we are now witnessing the phenomenon where news can be transmitted, at the click of a button, to a world wide web. It has gone out of hand for Part power is now dispersed to all and sundry and there is no way of knowing to what extent this could eventually play a part in alienating further the chances of countries and its people, of diverse cultures, coming together as one whole united mankind.
Racism is fanned.
Under the guise of democracy man feels he has the right to live as he chooses and to say what he pleases and, thanks to his computer and the anonymity it gives him as he clicks away in the privacy of his own home, he can be an instrument whereby he can sow, doubt, hatred and other negative feelings which are far-reaching and detrimental to peace.
There’s no way of knowing to what extend this means of communication could be so abused as to provoke irremediable damage to mankind.
Continued….
This morning I woke up in a cold sweat, troubled by a dream which had more of a premonition about it than anything else. The dream has faded but what has remained is the feeling of terror I experienced. My dream must have been instigated by the troubling news we are, day in day out, faced with.
All we seem to be presented with are heartrending stories about wars, famine, catastrophes etc., and all we seem to be seeing behind these stories are men who hold ‘prestigious’ positions arguing ‘presumably’ for the betterment of the world, but ‘presumably’ with a hidden, personal agenda which is directly tied to the power game that men never sem to outgrow from their childhood years.
Continued….
In the 60s, the news formula was different, less sports news and film-star comings and goings.
Benny Hill, when in his comedy film read the newspaper "News of the World", he said, "where is the news?!".
Every newspaper has a particular niche, The Financial Times, is mainly for the investor, and businessman, The Sun and News of the World, for hot gossip and sports, and the other ones in the UK vary from The Guardian and The Times that have a better mix of articles.
TV news is more short and condensed, than newspapers. Some are too repetitive (like CNN, Sky News etc).
Sad but true, people are more attracted to the celebrity news, and gossip, than more serious news that effect us all in this world.
As stated before, is it possible that no news stem from the poorer continents, or is it a purposely designed tactic, or not? It does make me wonder.
The other phenomenon is the so called democratisation of news, in the sense that today it is not only possible, but also relatively easy that whoever has something to say - be it a rant about the bad weather or an incisive analysis of the Obama presidency - has the means to publish it and potentially reach a large audience. Yes, the world wide web brought a revolution, but as Fr Borg put it - there is so much information out there that it is becoming increasingly difficult to chooose real news from half baked stories intended solely for personal gratification or to increase ratings. Media education alone can help media users to choose information from misinformation.
There were days when a whole village or city had just one bible for use in their mighty cathedrals ages ago as well as the days when education and information was a limited to the elite of the day. That's when the masses couldn't make infformed decisions or pick and choose was vital to their well being, they rather accepted everything as gospel truth. Hence, the manipulation that went on for centuries.
The inherent dangers of the commercialized media systems of today are not any different from the overly inherent dangers that were posed by the tightly controlled media apparatus of various regimes, national/global institutions, and churches before the advent of the computer.
BTW, can you really help the "people understand and manage this greatest phenomenon of contemporary culture"? What makes you feel qualified in that regard?
Have you ever heard of the phrase "let us wisely embrace the winds of change"?
More than anything the pure fabrication of news items would no longer be an occassional journalistic blunder, but an everyday reality with no means of assessing the facts.
Berlusconi gave up formally the "management" of his own private media companies, but they do not speak against him.
Regarding the US presidential election, when I referred to the US Ron Paul as one of the candidates, he got 60% in an internet poll by a top TV station (ABC perhaps) and the rest of them (Obama, Hillary Clinton, McCain, Rudy Guliani, etc) got 40% rated between them. After this event, the major TV stations did not dare make more public what Ron Paul, stood for.
What I am about is this. It does not care about the strength of the Presidential Candidate's arguments, that most people want, but WHOM the media wants to promote.
The US politicians would not dare make a referendum on should the US pull out of the war (or control) in the Middle East.
This shows that on the internet, although their are lots of information and disinformation, it is the most censor-free media vehicle left to the general public.
Let us make use of this freedom, while it lasts.
Misled, by whom really? Giving the possibility of discovering who is behind the mass media, gives us the answer. It is not so overt at all. I just wish to uncover to you firstly some historic facts about the mass media in general before I continue.
J.P. Morgan Interests, Buy 25 of America's Leading Newspapers and Insert Editors
U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917, page 2947.
This "purchase" was done before radio and TV were in place. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Morgan-Buys-Newspapers9feb17.htm
Now what makes anyone think that radios and television stations are not "bought" by powerful people to have their own agenda to misinform people?
I distrust skynews very much, and do so I think that CNN, Fox News, ABC and large TV stations. That is right, the bigger, the so called more credible, is the least credible.
Tim Marshall's agenda is simple. His subliminal message is this: If it is not big TV, it could be seriously flawed.
True that there is a lot of rubbish on the net, but occasionally great truth comes forth! Continued
In today's situation with the bombardement of ceaseless media hammering according to the announcer it is very hard to conclude which / what is the truth.!
Media is used in all its might by Politicians . Media is the only Weapon feared by the Politicians
Weak ivestigative journalism makes many happy / unnecoutabile Politicians and Entities
Strong '' '' " " accountabile Politicians and Entities
Why Malta has so much uneccountability? Life of an investigative journalist is truly another noble must have task a country should truly keep focused upon to ?