According to recent news reports, out of approximately 30,000 people infected by the swine flu worldwide 145 have died. Of course, these are just official numbers. Most likely, more people have been infected by the swine flu than has been officially tabulated, and, just as likely, more people have died from the swine flu than what official figures indicate.
Going by the official numbers, one's odds of dying -- if one contracts the swine flu -- are approximately 1 in 200.
This is not extremely high, but it's also not especially low. Certainly, the risk would seem to warrant more media attention being paid to the swine flu than is currently is being offered – at least within the United States (I’ve noticed the German media appear to be devoting more attention to the swine flu).
More importantly, the risk warrants a much more thorough effort on the part of the American media -- and American society in general -- to fully investigate and establish the cause of the swine flu.
Of course, as I've noted in another recent newsvine column, 'Denial on the swine flu' (http://demont-heinrich.newsvine.com/_news/2009/06/11/2919565-denial-on-the-swine-flu), there are many reasons so little effort seems to be being devoted to figuring out how and why the swine flu broke out where it did when it did.
Chief among these reasons: Mainstream media’s and mainstream society's near complete -- and potentially quite self-destructive -- denial on the mass production of meat. None of us wants to know where our hot dog came from -- apparently even if not paying more attention to this might end up killing a lot of us.
Need concrete evidence of mainstream media’s and mainstream society’s denial on factory farming? A LexisNexis Academic search on 6/12/09 of “Major U.S. and World Publications” using the keywords “swine flu” and “factory farming” yields just 24 articles, the vast majority of them opinion columns published in media outlets outside of the United States (in the UK, Australia and New Zealand).
Reputable research has warned of the dangers of large-scale meat production to the environment and to the health of human beings – not to mention to the animals themselves. For instance, in 2008, The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a report in which the authors note that filthy and congested industrial hog farms are prime breeding grounds for potentially extremely lethal pathogens (http://www.ncifap.org/).
If you're wondering how a 1 in 200 chance you will die from the swine flu -- if you contract it -- compares to other potential means of dying, here are some odds for Americans I tracked down at http://live.science.com (specific page URL = http://www.livescience.com/environment/050106_odds_of_dying.html).
Heart Disease = 1-in-5
Cancer = 1-in-7
Stroke = 1-in-23
Accidental Injury = 1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident = 1-in-100
Intentional Self-harm (suicide) = 1-in-121
Falling Down = 1-in-246
Assault by Firearm = 1-in-325
Air Travel Accident = 1-in-20,000
Lightning Strike = 1-in-83,930
Right now, the 1 in 200 odds you will die of the swine flu – if you contract it – place this risk somewhere between the risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident and the risk of dying from a fall. Of course, dying by a fall is not defined by live.science.com. For instance, does falling off a moving bike count?
Given that the swine flu is an unfolding global pandemic, it is pretty much impossible to calculate what the odds are that one will actually contract it. That said, the current odds that you or I will contract H1N1 right now, in June 2009 -- which is not flu season in North America – are almost certainly low.
However, as the virus spreads, these odds clearly increase, perhaps exponentially. They’ll surely increase – perhaps quite substantially -- when the Northern Hemisphere hits its flu season in the winter of 2009-10. It’s therefore extremely misleading for some to suggest that the swine flu doesn’t matter, because the odds of catching it – right now, at this very moment -- are low.
Just as problematic are paternalistic admonitions not to "panic". It’s as if the people who make these suggestions think the rest of us are idiot chicken littles because we -- in comparison to them -- apparently know so little about the actual danger and threat posed by a complex pathogen capable of quickly mutating and of quickly expanding its pool of victims.
But exactly what are the odds of the swine flu taking off – really taking off? In fact, no one knows – not even the paternalistic pundits who claim to “know” better than the rest of us!
Calculating odds of death so generally, as they are in the livescience.com chart I use here, is, of course, misleading. General odds-making fails to take into account the many variables that could increase – or decrease – the odds a particular individual will die in a motor vehicle accident or from being hit by lightning.
Clearly, the more often you drive, the more miles you cover, the type of car you drive, whether you text while driving etc. – along with countless other variables – all play a role in one’s own particular chance of dying in a car accident. Similarly, a person who lives in Colorado, which has a huge number of lightning strikes per year, as opposed to far Northern Alaska, which does not, is obviously much more likely to die of a lightning strike than their Northern Alaskan counterpart.
My goal in considering the question of the odds of dying if one contracts the swine flu isn’t to create or spread panic. Instead, it’s an attempt to push us – as a society -- to treat the H1N1 pandemic with the seriousness it deserves, and, most importantly, to seriously investigate its cause. Right now, our approach to establishing the cause of the swine flu is denial – I don’t really want to know because it might affect the way I think about meat. This doesn’t seem like an especially healthy – or smart – approach.
Showing posts with label media criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media criticism. Show all posts
Friday, June 12, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Denial on the swine flu
Until the WHO announcement of a global pandemic yesterday, news of the swine flu was drifting off the media radar screen. This, even as the virus continued to -- and continues to -- establish itself around the world, ready to potentially unleash a much more deadly outcome than it has thus far when the next flu season hits the Northern hemisphere.
Despite the deadly seriousness of the swine flu, media coverage has paid scant attention to the most important questions swirling around the swine flu – How and why did the outbreak occur when and where it did?, and, What can and should be done to prevent another such outbreak?
It's worth noting that at the same time we have essentially no coverage of the how and why behind the swine flu -- which could potentially crash the whole of humanity -- we have an absolute media obsession with the how and why on the Air France crash.
There are a number of reasons why the how and why questions behind the swine flu pandemic have failed to garner much coverage. First, the how and why questions are typically the most difficult for journalists to pursue and answer within the constraints of "objectivity". Second, increasingly severe economic constraints on journalism limit journalists’ ability to fully address the often extremely complex and difficult to probe how and why questions.
However, the problem extends far beyond news media norms and economics. The lack of focus on how and why -- and a restricted focus in terms of the crucial “what next?” question -- reflect larger tendencies in American society. One might term these the four D’s, or Defense, Denial, Dollars, and Dehumanization.
In fact, a pretty clear – and very narrow -- answer to ‘What next?’ has been delivered. Create a vaccination and inoculate.
No one would deny the importance of creating a medical defense against H1N1. The trouble is, offense – or prevention – falls from view. Instead of investing ourselves in figuring out how the outbreak occurred, why it occurred, and what we can do to prevent another such outbreak, we gloss over these issues and employ a back-end solution, or a solution grounded in defense rather than offense.
We opt for a defensive approach in part because we do not want to consider the possibility that our food production system might be responsible for breeding deadly pathogens. In other words, we deny the possibility that we are potentially creating the conditions of our own demise.
Denial – a powerful human trait -- is deeply ingrained when it comes to meat consumption. We don’t want to know where our hot dog came from, and woe betide the person who dares discuss this. Our denial is understandable. But it could also be dangerous if, for instance, we allow it to prevent us from taking a close, sustained, and informed look at the possible link between H1N1 and the mass production of meat.
That we are reluctant to “go there” is not just a matter of denial but also of dollars. Mass production methods typically push consumer costs down and producer profits up. Yet the apparent benefits of modern, mass-produced meat could potentially end up costing us in the long run, both in economic and human terms. In other words, short-term advantages might be outweighed by long-term disadvantages.
The balance between short-term and long-term costs is also worth examining in terms of the approach we have taken with respect to the spread of H1N1. Economic savings has been one of the basic rationales for the current approach, which appears to be let H1N1 spread and then address it in those places to which it has spread. If the pandemic intensifies, it could turn out that trying to save money in the short-term -- and seemingly crossing our fingers that the virus won’t mutate into a deadlier form -- might end up costing us far more in the long-term.
H1N1 carries current and potential economic and human costs. Sadly, we tend to dehumanize those who have died from the swine flu by treating them as statistics rather than as fellow human beings. It is as if in denying swine flu victims their individual humanity we believe we will miraculously reduce our own chances of becoming a victim ourselves.
There is a certain selfish rationality in appealing to numbers rather than to our collective humanity when confronted by the death of a fellow human being. It reduces our own fear that we might have the bad luck of becoming a “statistic”. But it seems to me that we somehow can, or at least ought to, try to keep our wits about us while also acknowledging that, as human beings, each us could fall victim to H1N1. Indeed, because so much is clearly at stake for all of us, we ought to vigorously investigate and pursue the conditions that led to the emergence of H1N1. This, so that we might be better prepared to prevent the next global pandemic from taking flight, hopefully before it has ever had a chance to take off.
Despite the deadly seriousness of the swine flu, media coverage has paid scant attention to the most important questions swirling around the swine flu – How and why did the outbreak occur when and where it did?, and, What can and should be done to prevent another such outbreak?
It's worth noting that at the same time we have essentially no coverage of the how and why behind the swine flu -- which could potentially crash the whole of humanity -- we have an absolute media obsession with the how and why on the Air France crash.
There are a number of reasons why the how and why questions behind the swine flu pandemic have failed to garner much coverage. First, the how and why questions are typically the most difficult for journalists to pursue and answer within the constraints of "objectivity". Second, increasingly severe economic constraints on journalism limit journalists’ ability to fully address the often extremely complex and difficult to probe how and why questions.
However, the problem extends far beyond news media norms and economics. The lack of focus on how and why -- and a restricted focus in terms of the crucial “what next?” question -- reflect larger tendencies in American society. One might term these the four D’s, or Defense, Denial, Dollars, and Dehumanization.
In fact, a pretty clear – and very narrow -- answer to ‘What next?’ has been delivered. Create a vaccination and inoculate.
No one would deny the importance of creating a medical defense against H1N1. The trouble is, offense – or prevention – falls from view. Instead of investing ourselves in figuring out how the outbreak occurred, why it occurred, and what we can do to prevent another such outbreak, we gloss over these issues and employ a back-end solution, or a solution grounded in defense rather than offense.
We opt for a defensive approach in part because we do not want to consider the possibility that our food production system might be responsible for breeding deadly pathogens. In other words, we deny the possibility that we are potentially creating the conditions of our own demise.
Denial – a powerful human trait -- is deeply ingrained when it comes to meat consumption. We don’t want to know where our hot dog came from, and woe betide the person who dares discuss this. Our denial is understandable. But it could also be dangerous if, for instance, we allow it to prevent us from taking a close, sustained, and informed look at the possible link between H1N1 and the mass production of meat.
That we are reluctant to “go there” is not just a matter of denial but also of dollars. Mass production methods typically push consumer costs down and producer profits up. Yet the apparent benefits of modern, mass-produced meat could potentially end up costing us in the long run, both in economic and human terms. In other words, short-term advantages might be outweighed by long-term disadvantages.
The balance between short-term and long-term costs is also worth examining in terms of the approach we have taken with respect to the spread of H1N1. Economic savings has been one of the basic rationales for the current approach, which appears to be let H1N1 spread and then address it in those places to which it has spread. If the pandemic intensifies, it could turn out that trying to save money in the short-term -- and seemingly crossing our fingers that the virus won’t mutate into a deadlier form -- might end up costing us far more in the long-term.
H1N1 carries current and potential economic and human costs. Sadly, we tend to dehumanize those who have died from the swine flu by treating them as statistics rather than as fellow human beings. It is as if in denying swine flu victims their individual humanity we believe we will miraculously reduce our own chances of becoming a victim ourselves.
There is a certain selfish rationality in appealing to numbers rather than to our collective humanity when confronted by the death of a fellow human being. It reduces our own fear that we might have the bad luck of becoming a “statistic”. But it seems to me that we somehow can, or at least ought to, try to keep our wits about us while also acknowledging that, as human beings, each us could fall victim to H1N1. Indeed, because so much is clearly at stake for all of us, we ought to vigorously investigate and pursue the conditions that led to the emergence of H1N1. This, so that we might be better prepared to prevent the next global pandemic from taking flight, hopefully before it has ever had a chance to take off.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
"Obsession" full of contradications
Just viewed the documentary, "Obesssion: Radical Islam's War Against the West."
This is a right-wing documentary, apparently funded at least in part by pro-Israelis, by the way. For more on the funding behind "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," check out the entry on "Popular Progressive," another blogger.com blog.
I'm not sure if I'll have time to show my students clips from "Obsession," but if I do, I will be encouraging them to deconstruct some of its fundamental "logic", its decided, really complete, lack of context vis-a-vis Islam and the history of Islam, and, some of the contradictions that riddle this right-wing documentary that was recently distributed in 70 daily newspapers across the U.S., including The Denver Post, and The New York Times.
I won't be deconstructing 'Obsession' in order to indoctrinate my students with so-called liberal propaganda. Contrary to the right-wing dogma -- which completely undersells their intellectual capabilities -- college students are not mindless, ideological sponges, or empty vassals into which doctrine of one kind or another is poured. They are intelligent, critical individuals who come to the classroom with strong viewpoints, and a lifelong set of political, religious, cultural experiences that have transformed them into reflective people fully capable of maintaining points of view at odds with those other students, with those in a given reading assigned by a professor, or those contained within a particular documentary film.
In fact, I probably won't have to deconstruct it. My students will do it on their own. But if they miss some of the contradictions and argumentative holes (giant chasms, really), I'll be happy to point them out -- in the spirit of inspiring good, critical, reflective thinking on the part of my students, not with the intent of "indoctrinating" them -- which, again, is impossible (and isn't my goal anyhow).
OK, on to a few criticisms of "Obsession" -- whose right to be distributed with 70 newspapers I fully support. (The problem isn't that right-wing documentaries are being distributed in The Denver Post, etc., but that the Left doesn't appear to have the money, or its act together, to distribute its own documentaries in similar fashion).
It's amazing to me that the producers of "Obsession" apparently don't see some of the gaping contradictions which severely undermine the primary points of their own documentary:
1) you have sources criticizing "the" Arab media for demonizing The West, when, of course, one of the primary goals of "Obsession" is to -- you guessed it -- demonize Islam.
2) you have sources in "Obsession" repeatedly saying that one needs to create fear, anxiety, etc. in a public -- they're referring to Muslim publics -- in order to get them to fight (a war). But, of course, "Obsession" is seeking to do exactly the same thing it condemns: Raise fear levels in the U.S. by tapping into stereotypes of Muslims so that "we" will fight "them."
The analogy of "radical Islam" to Hitler and Nazi-ism only loosely holds. That is, there are some parallels in terms of ideologies of indoctrination, but the documentary's analogy falls flat after that. Hitler was the leader of a powerful, industrialized nation-state in the middle of Europe that had the ability to produce a true, meaningful military threat to Europe and the world. Moreover, he wasn't trying to impose a radically different religous ideology on his citizens, which, presumably, so-called "radical islamists" are. In other words, because his material and larger ideological conditions were radically different, he was able to mobilize a true threat to Europe and the world.
So-called "Radical Islamists" simply do not have the same material means at their disposal as Hitler, nor do they enjoy the same geographic location -- they're not located at the heart of a Euro-centric world, geographically speaking."Obsession's" claim that a few "Radical" muslims have now "infiltrated" the U.S. and UK, etc., and that, therefore, "Radical Islam" is on the brink of total and complete world domination is, in a word, laughable.
This is not to say that there won't be more terrorist attacks in the UK, Germany, Spain, etc. in the future. There will be some, and every reasonable effort should be made to stave these off (notice that "Obsession" is very weak on "solutions" -- because it's primary goal is to instill fear, not meaningful, useful dialogue, etc.). But while these attacks will kill people, comparatively few will die in them, especially compared to the numbers of cilivians killed in Iraq in the last 5 years. (That comparatively few will die, doesn't mean that I do not value the lives of those who will die. I do.)
Furthermore, these small terrorist attacks simply do not have a hell's chance of knocking off the entire Western world and turning it into a 'Radical Islamic" empire. After all, 95% of Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc. simply wouldn't buy into the ideology of "radical" Islam. Indeed, as the documentary clearly shows, this ideology is anti-thetical to their very being. How could you conquer, and maintain control over a population, 95% of which fevertently opposes you? Especially with essentially no military might to do so. It ain't happening!Finally, comparing Hitler's legions of tanks, planes, howitzers, U-boats, millions of soldiers etc. to a handful of suicide bombers? Please!!!!
This is a right-wing documentary, apparently funded at least in part by pro-Israelis, by the way. For more on the funding behind "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," check out the entry on "Popular Progressive," another blogger.com blog.
I'm not sure if I'll have time to show my students clips from "Obsession," but if I do, I will be encouraging them to deconstruct some of its fundamental "logic", its decided, really complete, lack of context vis-a-vis Islam and the history of Islam, and, some of the contradictions that riddle this right-wing documentary that was recently distributed in 70 daily newspapers across the U.S., including The Denver Post, and The New York Times.
I won't be deconstructing 'Obsession' in order to indoctrinate my students with so-called liberal propaganda. Contrary to the right-wing dogma -- which completely undersells their intellectual capabilities -- college students are not mindless, ideological sponges, or empty vassals into which doctrine of one kind or another is poured. They are intelligent, critical individuals who come to the classroom with strong viewpoints, and a lifelong set of political, religious, cultural experiences that have transformed them into reflective people fully capable of maintaining points of view at odds with those other students, with those in a given reading assigned by a professor, or those contained within a particular documentary film.
In fact, I probably won't have to deconstruct it. My students will do it on their own. But if they miss some of the contradictions and argumentative holes (giant chasms, really), I'll be happy to point them out -- in the spirit of inspiring good, critical, reflective thinking on the part of my students, not with the intent of "indoctrinating" them -- which, again, is impossible (and isn't my goal anyhow).
OK, on to a few criticisms of "Obsession" -- whose right to be distributed with 70 newspapers I fully support. (The problem isn't that right-wing documentaries are being distributed in The Denver Post, etc., but that the Left doesn't appear to have the money, or its act together, to distribute its own documentaries in similar fashion).
It's amazing to me that the producers of "Obsession" apparently don't see some of the gaping contradictions which severely undermine the primary points of their own documentary:
1) you have sources criticizing "the" Arab media for demonizing The West, when, of course, one of the primary goals of "Obsession" is to -- you guessed it -- demonize Islam.
2) you have sources in "Obsession" repeatedly saying that one needs to create fear, anxiety, etc. in a public -- they're referring to Muslim publics -- in order to get them to fight (a war). But, of course, "Obsession" is seeking to do exactly the same thing it condemns: Raise fear levels in the U.S. by tapping into stereotypes of Muslims so that "we" will fight "them."
The analogy of "radical Islam" to Hitler and Nazi-ism only loosely holds. That is, there are some parallels in terms of ideologies of indoctrination, but the documentary's analogy falls flat after that. Hitler was the leader of a powerful, industrialized nation-state in the middle of Europe that had the ability to produce a true, meaningful military threat to Europe and the world. Moreover, he wasn't trying to impose a radically different religous ideology on his citizens, which, presumably, so-called "radical islamists" are. In other words, because his material and larger ideological conditions were radically different, he was able to mobilize a true threat to Europe and the world.
So-called "Radical Islamists" simply do not have the same material means at their disposal as Hitler, nor do they enjoy the same geographic location -- they're not located at the heart of a Euro-centric world, geographically speaking."Obsession's" claim that a few "Radical" muslims have now "infiltrated" the U.S. and UK, etc., and that, therefore, "Radical Islam" is on the brink of total and complete world domination is, in a word, laughable.
This is not to say that there won't be more terrorist attacks in the UK, Germany, Spain, etc. in the future. There will be some, and every reasonable effort should be made to stave these off (notice that "Obsession" is very weak on "solutions" -- because it's primary goal is to instill fear, not meaningful, useful dialogue, etc.). But while these attacks will kill people, comparatively few will die in them, especially compared to the numbers of cilivians killed in Iraq in the last 5 years. (That comparatively few will die, doesn't mean that I do not value the lives of those who will die. I do.)
Furthermore, these small terrorist attacks simply do not have a hell's chance of knocking off the entire Western world and turning it into a 'Radical Islamic" empire. After all, 95% of Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc. simply wouldn't buy into the ideology of "radical" Islam. Indeed, as the documentary clearly shows, this ideology is anti-thetical to their very being. How could you conquer, and maintain control over a population, 95% of which fevertently opposes you? Especially with essentially no military might to do so. It ain't happening!Finally, comparing Hitler's legions of tanks, planes, howitzers, U-boats, millions of soldiers etc. to a handful of suicide bombers? Please!!!!
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Blogging won't change the (media) world
Given that I was labeled as the family "commentator" as a child, and that I love to comment on things, especially macro-sociological and larger philosophical questions and issues, it is strange that it's taken me so long to start blogging. Blogging seems perfectly suited to this sort of approach to life.I guess you could say that somehow I never carved out the time for it, or spent my time in other ways (at the moment the biggest draw on my time is my two very young children).
A deep skepticism about the power of bottom-up human social organization is probably another reason it's taken me awhile to get around to blogging. As far as I'm concerned, large, top-down political, economic, and social institutions, and the privileged elite who run them, basically dictate the shape of society.In the realm of news media, for example, large producers such as The New York Times, ABC News, CNN and so on -- still hold the balance of power despite the rise of blogging or what Dan Gillmor has labeled a "We, the media" movement. Yeah, so I can blog now -- but no one's going to read what I write, while millions will continue to surf to CNN.com, foxnews.com, and so on.
OK, so a relatively few people have made it big blogging -- and blogging has, on the whole, affected the way traditional news media cover the news. But it hasn't been a revolution. I can challenge Thomas Friedman's free-market, individualist ideology all I want in this blog (and I will!). But, in all likelihood, no one will read my critiques, certainly not Friedman himself, and other nationally syndicated columnists and pundits such as David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, and so on (all of whom I will challenge in this blog at some point). They will all continue on in blissful ignorance of criticisms of their views.
Is there a cushier job on the face of the planet than (inter)nationally syndicated columnist or broadcast media pundit? You write a few columns a week, appear on this talk show or that, have the opportunity to voice your views to millions, and rarely if ever reflect upon the extreme privilege and comparative power you hold. I don't mean power in the sense that media pundits and columnists will mold readers views as if they are a bunch of ideological sponges (Does Bill O'Reilly really think he's EVER convinced anyone of anything other than the minions who are already in his choir?). I mean power in the sense that your take on the world, politics, culture, the U.S. is far more widely circulated than those of an individual media consumer, who very well may be incensed by your views -- and may well be able to easily deconstruct your "logic".
If a reader of a widely published columnist challenges that columnist, if they are lucky, he or she will be reduced to 250-word letters to the editor. More than likely, they'll never have their letter to the editor published. Some will be relegated to cyberspace, forced to post responses on bulletin boards read by comparatively few people (I wonder how many Denver Post reporters actually troll the newspaper's bulletin boards and blogs, for example, or if columnists such as David Harsanyi -- whose elitist libertarian columns -- yes, on a macro-level, libertarians are elitists -- they presume that their opponents are idiots for not seeing the world the way that they do; in short, they assume that their views are better than others -- do), or banished to the black hole of the blogosphere, where no one will read their response -- though their response may well be more sophisticated and represent better thinking than that of the columnist whom they are challenging.
Sure would be nice to see news media columnists and pundits occasionally acknowledge their tremendous and unusual power and privilege explicitly, rather than what one usually sees, which is, if they acknowledge readers and viewers at all in their columns, they do so in order to belittle their views (see Bill O'Reilly's mailbox, for example -- though certainly he is not at all the only media pundit/columnist to wield his power in this way). Usually, they do so by selectively culling material from mail they receive, and framing it in a context that suits their own rhetorical ends.
Though I can't, and won't, claim to have the definitive view on the relationship between news media producers and consumers, it seems to me that much of the anger and frustration with the traditional "mainstream" (and powerful) media and its various elite does not come from a sense of media "bias." Admittedly there are plenty such charges levied against the mainstream media, which, of course, is, and always will be "biased" -- biased toward a centrist politics and ideology that is deceivingly cast as the "objective".
It's worth emphasizing that at a certain level all stories about the social world, indeed, the natural world, are "biased." They always reflect particular human, social, cultural, theoretical and political perspectives on "reality." One need not look far for confirmation that the notion of a "pure objectivity," a notion which typically embeds itself in the general term "objective," is a mirage. Compare news coverage of the same events, say the Iraq war, in the U.S., in Canada, in Germany, in Iran, in India, and you'll immediately see that ALL news, yes, even "objective" news from the U.S., reflects a national "bias." The documentary Control Room clearly illustrates this basic fact while occasionally underscoring the arrogance of American journalists who claim to be objective (but then laugh, clap, and cheer wildly as the first images of U.S. troops entering Baghdad are shown at CENTCOM).
I will return to deconstructing "objectivity" in another post. Here I'll contend that much of the frustration and anger with the mainstream media in the U.S. comes from the up-until-very-recently almost exclusively one-way flow of news -- from the powerful producer, to the largely powerless (though not passive) news consumer. This sense of frustration is, in my view, justified. For it is human social nature to want to have an opportunity to challenge -- in the same context and from within the same position of power as the original person(s) advancing a view, ideology, etc. -- perspectives that clash with one's own.
Seems to me that news media professionals of all types ought to acknowledge the reality and legitimacy of such frustration more explicitly and more often. In other words, they need to acquire more humility than many now have. (Indeed, this is something I teach my news writing and reporting students at the University of Denver. As a former journalist with eight years in print media, I'll never forget some of the paternalistic and patronizing attitudes I saw among some of my fellow journalists.)
Yes, the advent of the Internet, blogs, discussion boards, e-mail, and so on has altered the news mediascape -- somewhat. But so far, it has not at all been a radical transformation. As far as I can tell, the one-to-many, the one-talking-down-to-the-masses, or, in the case of self-appointed purveyors of reality like Fox's Bill O'Reilly, the shouting-down-those-with-whom-you-disagree-because-you-aren't-smart-enough-to-engage-their-arguments-intellectually style of news media production and consumption still dominates.
Yet despite the fact that the current climate is still one dominated by the few and predicated largely on a one-down-to-many model of transmission, for some strange reason, I have chosen to start blogging. Perhaps this isn't surprising given my general fixation with the paradox that is the relation between individual and society, or with the ways in which the individual can at once be seen as both helpless and hapless and as contributing to the very forms of directed social action that reinforce, and, yes, occasionally, mitigate (though only slightly) this helplessness and haplessness.
A deep skepticism about the power of bottom-up human social organization is probably another reason it's taken me awhile to get around to blogging. As far as I'm concerned, large, top-down political, economic, and social institutions, and the privileged elite who run them, basically dictate the shape of society.In the realm of news media, for example, large producers such as The New York Times, ABC News, CNN and so on -- still hold the balance of power despite the rise of blogging or what Dan Gillmor has labeled a "We, the media" movement. Yeah, so I can blog now -- but no one's going to read what I write, while millions will continue to surf to CNN.com, foxnews.com, and so on.
OK, so a relatively few people have made it big blogging -- and blogging has, on the whole, affected the way traditional news media cover the news. But it hasn't been a revolution. I can challenge Thomas Friedman's free-market, individualist ideology all I want in this blog (and I will!). But, in all likelihood, no one will read my critiques, certainly not Friedman himself, and other nationally syndicated columnists and pundits such as David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, and so on (all of whom I will challenge in this blog at some point). They will all continue on in blissful ignorance of criticisms of their views.
Is there a cushier job on the face of the planet than (inter)nationally syndicated columnist or broadcast media pundit? You write a few columns a week, appear on this talk show or that, have the opportunity to voice your views to millions, and rarely if ever reflect upon the extreme privilege and comparative power you hold. I don't mean power in the sense that media pundits and columnists will mold readers views as if they are a bunch of ideological sponges (Does Bill O'Reilly really think he's EVER convinced anyone of anything other than the minions who are already in his choir?). I mean power in the sense that your take on the world, politics, culture, the U.S. is far more widely circulated than those of an individual media consumer, who very well may be incensed by your views -- and may well be able to easily deconstruct your "logic".
If a reader of a widely published columnist challenges that columnist, if they are lucky, he or she will be reduced to 250-word letters to the editor. More than likely, they'll never have their letter to the editor published. Some will be relegated to cyberspace, forced to post responses on bulletin boards read by comparatively few people (I wonder how many Denver Post reporters actually troll the newspaper's bulletin boards and blogs, for example, or if columnists such as David Harsanyi -- whose elitist libertarian columns -- yes, on a macro-level, libertarians are elitists -- they presume that their opponents are idiots for not seeing the world the way that they do; in short, they assume that their views are better than others -- do), or banished to the black hole of the blogosphere, where no one will read their response -- though their response may well be more sophisticated and represent better thinking than that of the columnist whom they are challenging.
Sure would be nice to see news media columnists and pundits occasionally acknowledge their tremendous and unusual power and privilege explicitly, rather than what one usually sees, which is, if they acknowledge readers and viewers at all in their columns, they do so in order to belittle their views (see Bill O'Reilly's mailbox, for example -- though certainly he is not at all the only media pundit/columnist to wield his power in this way). Usually, they do so by selectively culling material from mail they receive, and framing it in a context that suits their own rhetorical ends.
Though I can't, and won't, claim to have the definitive view on the relationship between news media producers and consumers, it seems to me that much of the anger and frustration with the traditional "mainstream" (and powerful) media and its various elite does not come from a sense of media "bias." Admittedly there are plenty such charges levied against the mainstream media, which, of course, is, and always will be "biased" -- biased toward a centrist politics and ideology that is deceivingly cast as the "objective".
It's worth emphasizing that at a certain level all stories about the social world, indeed, the natural world, are "biased." They always reflect particular human, social, cultural, theoretical and political perspectives on "reality." One need not look far for confirmation that the notion of a "pure objectivity," a notion which typically embeds itself in the general term "objective," is a mirage. Compare news coverage of the same events, say the Iraq war, in the U.S., in Canada, in Germany, in Iran, in India, and you'll immediately see that ALL news, yes, even "objective" news from the U.S., reflects a national "bias." The documentary Control Room clearly illustrates this basic fact while occasionally underscoring the arrogance of American journalists who claim to be objective (but then laugh, clap, and cheer wildly as the first images of U.S. troops entering Baghdad are shown at CENTCOM).
I will return to deconstructing "objectivity" in another post. Here I'll contend that much of the frustration and anger with the mainstream media in the U.S. comes from the up-until-very-recently almost exclusively one-way flow of news -- from the powerful producer, to the largely powerless (though not passive) news consumer. This sense of frustration is, in my view, justified. For it is human social nature to want to have an opportunity to challenge -- in the same context and from within the same position of power as the original person(s) advancing a view, ideology, etc. -- perspectives that clash with one's own.
Seems to me that news media professionals of all types ought to acknowledge the reality and legitimacy of such frustration more explicitly and more often. In other words, they need to acquire more humility than many now have. (Indeed, this is something I teach my news writing and reporting students at the University of Denver. As a former journalist with eight years in print media, I'll never forget some of the paternalistic and patronizing attitudes I saw among some of my fellow journalists.)
Yes, the advent of the Internet, blogs, discussion boards, e-mail, and so on has altered the news mediascape -- somewhat. But so far, it has not at all been a radical transformation. As far as I can tell, the one-to-many, the one-talking-down-to-the-masses, or, in the case of self-appointed purveyors of reality like Fox's Bill O'Reilly, the shouting-down-those-with-whom-you-disagree-because-you-aren't-smart-enough-to-engage-their-arguments-intellectually style of news media production and consumption still dominates.
Yet despite the fact that the current climate is still one dominated by the few and predicated largely on a one-down-to-many model of transmission, for some strange reason, I have chosen to start blogging. Perhaps this isn't surprising given my general fixation with the paradox that is the relation between individual and society, or with the ways in which the individual can at once be seen as both helpless and hapless and as contributing to the very forms of directed social action that reinforce, and, yes, occasionally, mitigate (though only slightly) this helplessness and haplessness.
