UPDATE: An exchange between NYT editor Bill Keller and Glenn Greenwald on what journalism is and isn't should make the rounds.
It is commonly said that communication is a two-way street. We also live in a time of political polarization in the USA where even the media complain that 'both sides do it'. 'It' being whatever the media don't want to address regarding the misinformation and manipulation that political entities espouse on any given day. This polarization itself is a product of concerted efforts to engage in a kind of 'information combat', for the purposes of winning political power and influence outcomes. Added to this is the very real effects of the digital-information-age explosion which permits and encourages many millions more to add their voices, communications, information and opinion. And all this can be delivered as a result to a much wider audience.
By itself, this is a very good thing. More voices and more communication of them should mean more people engaged in the process, resulting in a richer, more representative, more informed electorate. As well as their representatives in politics. But with big money behind many of the opinions and power seekers in this democracy, wide dissemination of any kind of information can also be readily had.
As it turns out, any idea can seemingly become available, then popularized and then, hold sway for many on the recieving end. Even calculated, designedly manipulative, misinformation can and does: it's been the industry standard for generations. The intersection of advertising and politics, the interplay of big money, advertising, politics probably had somethnig to do with the popularity polls in the early years of the Iraq invasion. "But both sides do it!" many like to say. The problem I see, with many stepping to the microphone and saying what's on their mind, is that not enough listeners, to my ears, are asking just what are the talkers informed with.
It used to be that the press, the media, journalists would ask about the provenance, the source of any given information. But reliability, the source of expert information, and their validity are commonly no longer questioned. They are just repeated as 'expert witnesses'. This idea has extended to that of politicians who are increasingly treated as news sources themselves, as are Generals, eonomic 'analysts' and even self-avowed 'entertainers', who are seen more commonly as 'ratings generators' rather than 'truth-tellers' or journalists.
Commercials and advertisers try to sell us stuff all the time, all our lives. We know that. We know they're online, on the radio, in our smart phones. But journalism has only fairly recently fully succumbed to, has only recently, fully gone commercial. Newspapers always had ads and coupons. In the 21st century, with everything serving 'the bottom line', or ratings, too many editors and producers have decided to give less attention to what journalism is for. Telling the truth, revealing corruption, getting the story. Instead the focus is on the money and on spreading opinions of the already powerful, the special interest. Special interests like business, like big energy, like big agri- and pharma-industries. Sure, big data. The link is to an 18 minute Terri Gross interview with a correspondent on a PBS Frontline series about the changing nature of the news, in 2007.
Nowadays we are beginning to know what it is like to be farmed for data, for our personal information. To be used for the purposes of others, like the state, like the businesses, the ad agencies. Our privacy for their databanks. This is not a two-way street anymore. The communication lines aren't equable. Why can the government have secret programs about the information it collects on us and we are not allowed to know how they work? Why can the business that allows me to use facebook, or google - at least three at any given time - be allowed to collect all that data and yet, still tell us that their uses of that data still 'may remain' their private information and not subject to user scrutiny? Why is only a few these sorts of questions being asked at all when so much seems at stake?
No comments:
Post a Comment