Dog Eat Dog

The most interesting thing about the media today is that more often than not they will jump at any scandalous story, even if it's about their fellow journalist. There is a bit of a hubbub about how Madonna won a law suit against British press. A tabloid had run an article featuring wedding pictures that had been stolen from her home. I will not even begin to rant about how overbearingly annoying it is that someone would actually steal something from someone just because it would make for a story. Instead i would like to pause and reflect on how funny this is. The media is exploiting how Madonna has beat...the media. Granted it's American versus British but still, is there no code of honor?

Of course not. Its a competition all the way. Who can one up and who can exploit is all that maters. As long as people want to read something and it sells then go ahead and turn on the printers and mail the papers. One could say that the journalist who are spreading the word of the tabloids failure are doing good, showing the follies of paparazzi's that everyone knows are heinously annoying and immoral. This could be true, but it could also be true that the very same journalist would jump at the chance to write an article on a scandalous affair between Madonna and Josh Groban (because I mean who could see that coming? It would be crazy). 

In any case , I'm not saying that it's a terrible thing , the media turning on media, just pointing out the oddity of it.The intricacies of interest never fail to amuse me.

Wal-Mart Shoppers

I was on Thanksgiving break in Florida when I glanced at the T.V in the living room and saw the headline. WAL MART SHOPPER CRUSHED IN BLACK FRIDAY MADNESS.

I thought it was a joke.

Then realized that it was all true. A crowd of shoppers actually became so excited about prices that they trampled a man to death.

"This is ridiculous" I thought. Then I realized, THIS is america.

Perhaps its harsh to blame the media for only showing us crass stories about brittany spears shaving her head and high-school girls getting pregnant, when that really is what's happening. We truly do live in a country with strange problems and perhaps the media is a mirror image of that society. We are the people that want to slow down when looking at a car accident, we are the people who listen for gossip and indulge in learning secrets. It is the corporate side of the media industry that caters to that aspect of our society. In order to make a profit they have to give us the latest scoop on a wal mart scandal, because thats what people will buy. 

so thats what the media is, a mirror into our desires. Yes a good majority of us want to read about politics and science but another large portion of the country loves to see movie stars go to rehab.And so many papers include articles about Obama and GPS but many papers also printed a story about a wal mart disaster. 

A Broken Record of a Tragedy

Now I know that my last post was similar to this one but bear with me.

Today I sat in my Politics of war class and sat down to a lector on the Iraq war. Unfortunately my professor is quite ill and has almost no voice and so he told us we would have to do most of the talking.He requested that we gather into small groups and list what we knew about the war. We had simple questions to answer: what kind of war was it , who the combatants and what was the Surge etc etc. Now I do not claim to know a whole lot about the Iraq war in all it's complexity. I am aware of the fighting between the Sunni and Shiites and the US alliance with most of the Shiites. Besides that and a bit about the  Al-Qaeda, I'm not aware of a whole lot , still I got into the group of International Relations students assuming i was about to be informed. Strangely however , no one in my group knew a whole lot. Hardly anything , in fact. When the professor asked the class as a whole to share there was a heavy silence in the room. 

I was horrified. In a class of college students, most of whom are studying international relations, no one knew the specifics of the war. They could not even tell you what it is about. 

What kind of a country are we living in where the people don't even know why their soldiers are dying? Why is the media printing papers with celebrity marriages and dirty politicians social lives when there is a war going on that no one knows anything about? Why is it that news broadcasters are telling me about tests on organic vegetables and yet americans are being slaughtered and 90,000 refugees are driven from their homes every month?

The Public Eye

We have learned that one of the factors that dictates news is the interest of readers. One of the things that falls into this category is fame. People want to read about famous people : celebrities , politicians etc. Thousands of average people begin and end relationships every day but the only ones that get spread out on a magazine are the ones that are started and ended by people we see in the movies. A woman down the street from where I used to live embezzled money from town hall but it wasn't in any magazines , but if any famous politician tried to pull that trick their face would be one the news for weeks. This is a both beneficial and detrimental. While I cannot find any good reason to poke our nose into the personal life of overpaid actors I do think its good to know more about politicians. People need to know about the people with power in their local area. The detriment is found when you consider where the focus of the common people is being placed. For instance , hundred of people have read about Eliot Spitzer and his use of prostitutes. Its all over the news and internet and people everywhere are shaking their head and looking down on this obvious infringement on new York State law. Still , with the statistics of rape being what they are , why is the media focusing on one man having sex with a willing person? You can theorize that perhaps if the media focused on the unwilling victims and rapist's stories then maybe we could lower the statistic. Perhaps this is the detriment of drawing public focus , the detriment of idolization of the famous. 

Tunnel Vision

So I know that on election day , as history is being made I ought to write my blog on the impeding presidency. Still , I wanted to use this post to look back at past presidential decisions influenced by the media. 

Let me take you back to 1992 to one of the few "humanitarian" war decisions made in the U.S. 

What defines a Humanitarian intervention is a lack of personal gain for the country that intervenes.  But it raises the question "why go to war if there is no personal gain?". This is why humanitarian intervention doesn't happen often (or one could argue ...ever). 

So if people don't just send troops into a hostile place out of the goodness of their hearts, Why did Bush decide to provide relief to Somalia? The answer lies in the media and public opinion.

While somalia was undergoing famine crisis , there was also trouble brewing (well...boiling over actually) in The Balkans. Bosnia was being torn to pieces by serbian armies and the UN provided little help. So with all the pleas for help echoing out of Yugoslavia why did the president decide to send troops to Somalia? 

The answer is simple. The News began running pictures of starving people on the 6 o'clock slot. Happy American families were just sitting down to dinner when they were presented with horrific pictures of skeleton like children gleaming out from their television sets. The public response was passionate. People wanted something to be done , and as Bush had led a rather unspectacular Presidency he saw a chance to make a name for himself. 

1.5 somalians were expected to die from starvation , because of the intervention only 50,000 to 100,000 actually died. All because of some pictures in the media.

News At Half Empty

So call me sentimental but during tech week when one suffers from a significant loss of sleep i fight the temptation to be incredibly negative by looking at those heart warming (all be it kind of cheesy) stories the news is so fond of broadcasting. So last monday i went onto MSN news to look for such a tale. I wanted to hear about charity funding a children's hospital or a Man who had run into a burning building to save a baby, anything to make me start thinking the world wasn't an awful cynical place (even if it really is). So I click on the little NEWS tab and what do i see, Palin effigies, Body discovered in search for murdered teacher , college tuition up 6.4 percent , and thousands lack power after northeast storm (ruining halloween!!). I had to do some serious digging before finally finding a video story about a special farm of animals used as a kind of therapy for children with mental disabilities. It made me say "awww" and cheered me up , but why did i have to search so hard for it. Why was the rotting corpse of a murdered woman on the front page but a family builds a farm for special needs children to experience joy from and they get buried at the bottom of the news bin? What is society's obsession with tragedy? what happened to the days of the depression , when people turned to musicals like Oklahoma because of their optimistic views? why battle hard times with more negativity. Why not focus on the good?

The end that justifies the means

One of the major accusations that the media is throwing at the Obama campaign is that he is a "socialist". This scares people because socialism is quite a bit like communism. It's the idea that capitalism gives wealth to only a small fraction of society , leaving the majority with significantly less money and power. 

The thing is, the current system DOES only give money to a small fraction and in the upcoming depression it's not going to work out. But people hear "spread the wealth" and they can only see red. 

It's true that Obama's plan for fiscal reconstruction is not exactly individualistic. He does call for the individual to serve society with the raising of taxes. He also wants more government involvement in health care. The truth is however , we DO need to give to society as a whole if we are going to survive the financial crisis. People don't want to hear it but it IS necessary. As far as health care goes, Obama wants more involvement because he wants more affordable health care for anyone who needs it. Speaking as someone who has had to pay for her own health care out of pocket, I can tell you that this plan is also necessary. Obama wants to spread the wealth and the media and public go into a nervous frenzy , but doesn't it just make sense? Isn't it a flaw in the system that corrupt business owners can own cars that cost more than your house but the single working mother with a five year old son can't afford to take him to the hospital when he is sick? How can the media criticize something so obviously needed in this country, just because it isn't individualistic. Does the "individual" only mean "the elite individual"? The lower class is made up of individuals , it is not some seething mass we call "society".