A few thoughts that have lingered about for the past week...

In response to some of the recent readings and discussion, it brought up some interesting ideas that are of particular interest to me since they relate to media. News media has been a subject of interest for me since it is my current profession, but also because it is part of a social fabric, integral to our cultural understanding. It is often the source of attention, for both positive and negative reasons, yet the communication of information and cultural exchange is dependent on it. The main criticism seems to be in regard to the bias that exists within these organizations. It is seen as a closed system with a predetermined ideology decided upon by an elite group that is not representative of the diverstiy that exists within the populus they cover.

In my experience, there is truth to these opinions. The most prevalent plague for modern journalism is the corporate culture that drives it. It is limiting to be caught within the interests of multi billion dollar operations, with shareholders, boards of directors and a bottom line to meet. Isn't this true of most industries these days? Sadly, it is a sign of the times. It is simply more efficient, cost effective, and viable to stay competetive through consolidation rather than integrity and independent vision. Journalists will struggle with this for some time to come, as it does not look like a change to this model is in sight.

The idea of objectivity when dealing with any human endeavor is a fallacy. There are judgements made all the time by journalists about which stories to cover, how to cover them, what importance should be given to them. Frequently, the same news is covered by different organizations in a startlingly similar fashion. Though the work was done independently, it almost seems at times as if there are covert consultations that exist between competing news outlets in order to compare notes. It must be pointed out however, that every news outlet is by nature competitive, just as in business, to get the story first, and hopefully to make it accurate. Unfortunately, accuracy is more often sacrificed than expediency. At the end of the day, it is about gaining a share of the audience which is pulled in a plethora of new directions by the burgeoning field of new media.

It is true that there is less attention paid to news that comes from places like Rwanda or the Sudan, until the atrocities like the ones we have seen in recent history are substantiated by the sheer scope of the disaster and they can no longer be ignored. It is unfortunate. And even more unfortunate is how little it affects most of the audience that views, hears, or reads about it in the news.

Newsmen like Walter Cronkite were revered, not for objectivity, but for an ability to encapsulate the emotion of a story and on a human level, and allow viewers to draw conclusions from his own observations. His reporting was hardly unbiased, but he gathered enough information, that despite his own beliefs and opinions, which became evident within the framework of his field reporting and newscasts, viewers were armed with a sense of what was going on in these complex stories. In the case of Vietnam, they took it to the streets, and in the case of the Iran hostage crisis, they took it to the polls. In both cases, this type of journalism changed the face of an American and thereby international landscape.

Is this the best approach? Is this the role of media? It is one approach. And it was effective enough to gain a share of American television viewership that our current media conglomerates can only dream of drawing to a news program. The media is changing. It is changing here in this country, on a local and national level and around the world. The European model of the state subsidized system, unfettered by profit margins is shifting in favor of the American capitalist system. Whether or not this is the best system and what will come to dominate the landscape remains to be seen. But it certainly bears some study as to why the media seems to be so diluted in its effectiveness and so narrow in its view of world affairs when the resources at hand only continue to be advanced by technology.