Monday, January 31, 2011
While I Drink My Coffee
There is a famous story in the Talmud where someone came to a renowned scholar and asked him to teach him everything he knew while he was standing on one foot. We are really posing the challenge every day to the medias. We want information about Wall Street, the stock exchange, international and domestic politics, to laugh, to learn and to make our own opinion before we finish this coffee. Therefore, the medias have had to take the difficult challenge to give us all of that in such a way that it wouldn't take more than 5 minutes of our time to know what they have to tell us. If they don't fish us and inform us rapidly enough, they are dead, all of them. In such a situation what can only wonder about the quality not only of the medias delivery but of the so-called "informed citizen". Is "coffee informed" informed enough?
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This is probably why the media is so important. I would argue that this is how they are able to angle information and force forth their bias. Newspapers and websites alike are fully aware that a reader will not be doing much analysis. Most people do not pick up six different newspapers in order to obtain somewhat of an objective point of view. Therefore, media outlets truly have such an important role. In the Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, he asserts that "A camera requires law, order, the thin blue line. Seeking to preserve itself, it remains behind the shielding wall, observing the shadow-lands from afar, and of course from above: that is, it chooses sides." Rushdie is not only referring to cameras. He is simply saying that even when information is factual, it is crucial to note the angle of the camera, or in our case, the slant of the writer. Two newspapers can both present facts of the same situation, yet leave a reader with two distinctly different impressions which is part of what we learned in class today regarding Obama's deficit cuts.
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying that "coffee informed" is not informed enough and that really the situation where the average citizen only gets one angle of the story does not advance the public agenda but rather constrains it at a point where everyone remains convinced of his own opinion? Then media would take their power not only from partisanship but also from the rushing modern life?
ReplyDeleteCoffee-informed is informed enough for someone who sits down with the expectation of reading a newspaper for 5 minutes or less.
ReplyDeleteArguing whether that is enough information is a different conversation that challenges the tradition of getting your news at breakfast, on the train or on your phone.
However, you wouldn't say that a first grader isn't learning "enough" - they're learning as much as they can learn at their capacity in their classroom.
In the same way, you can have similar expectations of the way people digest the news. Some people read the newspaper, and read it well. Others are more invested in being informed, so they take the time to read extensive details about current events online, in magazines, etc.
you're comparing someone who reads his newspaper in five minutes to a first grader? This is not a question of ability, it is a question of time investment and dedication to truth. It is also a question of what techniques the media uses in a setting where they have to provide information in five minutes.
ReplyDeleteI agree that people have the ability to invest in getting information, but I think the time investment aspect is dependent on the individual person and their level of interest. And in that way, the comparison does work-teachers need to get kids interested in learning and newscasters or journalists need to get people interested.
ReplyDeleteA big problem our society faces is indifference. People don't necessarily care about things that don't directly affect them. For example, if a person doesn't feel connected to our troops overseas, he will not care so much about what they are doing, and therefore he will not invest a lot of time looking for truthful news and updates on the war. Why will he read the news at all? I think because we feel that as an educated people, we have to know what's going on in the world. But only the truly educated who invest more know the real facts.
The person reading a newspaper over coffee may have a real interest but very limited time, or may not have a real interest, and just want a surface level knowledge of what is happening in the world. It is for these people that the new trends of getting news-from entertainment news to twitter etc-are emerging. People have limited interest and little patience to search for real news.