September 2008 Archives

In a Diversity in the Media class, a professor once asked "If you were to need a quote from a member of the Asian community, would you pick someone below the poverty level or an upper-class professional?"

The question was obviously designed to show what horrible people journalists can be in their reluctance to broach the unfamiliar, but my immediate response was that one should choose the source with the best quote.

That statement may seem crass at first, but the philosophy behind it I think is one that can turn the notions of class-ism, racism, sexism, etc. on their heads.

As a journalist (or just as a human) one can peak through the curtains of all the isms and learn to view all people through an objective lens. The best way to do this sounds simple on paper, but it's quite obvious many people have neglected to try: expose yourself to something new. That's it. It can be done simply by taking an extra step to interact with someone you may not normally interact with, reading up on a culture that is literally and figuratively foreign to you, or by simply boning up on geography.

A study in 2006 showed that two-thirds of Americans 18-24 could not locate Iraq on a map. This might be great fodder for a Leno piece, but in the end it is shameful and, more importantly, shockingly easy to remedy. 

By taking in a little bit of everything, we can start to see the world how it really is: not as a T.V. dinner where each demographic is as different and separate as the enchilada entre from the vegetables and dessert, but as that scary looking casserole your aunt put on the Thanksgiving table, it is a sum of its parts, and each part is virtually indistinguishable from every other. Chances are, that casserole is better for you anyway, so put your fears and apprehensions aside and take a big bite.

When three photographers were arrested at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., they were identified as "having connections to the University of Kentucky's student newspaper" on kentucky.com.

Some might argue that their affiliation with a student newspaper gives them less privileges than a "legitimate" paper. There are those who might take that argument even further since, according to the article, the photographers went to Minnesota fully aware that any photos they took would not be used in their own paper.

However, the fourth estate does not come with a set of training wheels. Affixing the word "student" before their titles of "journalist" confuses the issue and diminishes the vocation they have thrust themselves into.

Labeling someone a "student journalist" is akin to labeling a fledgling pianist a student musician. There is virtually no difference between what these students are doing in their school days from what their careers will entail. From the jump, these "students" are engaged in an environment where their work is treated no differently than it will be when they are receiving benefits and sick time to do the same thing: inform their audience as accurately and objectively as possible in an effort to educate the public which greases the wheels of democracy.

The fact that these "students" braved the convention while knowingly going unpublished and unpaid shows that they're adhering to the calling of the fourth estate out of a sense of purpose and shear need.

If that doesn't give them the right to be taken seriously, I don't know what does.

The news media has hailed this presidential election as unprecedented. One for the history books. A huge step forward for America no matter how you slice it, Democratic ticket or Republican ticket.

 

But in this fete of supposed progressive thinking, one archaic practice is still being tossed around by both the news media and by the politicians themselves: isms.

 

Racism. Sexism. Ageism. Fanaticism. Liberalism. Conservatism.

 

Isms are a quick fix for our brains -- a simple, tidy way of roping a group of people with related opinions together, setting them to one side and saying there. That's that. I get what you're about.

 

Yes, isms make us think we understand others when in fact they actually hinder our ability to truly do so. To use an ism is to generalize, and to in effect deny the diverse rationales that can lead people to hold the same opinion. We stoop to using isms either because we're too lazy or too narrow-minded to take time to think out these diverse rationales.

 

It's so much easier to argue that anyone who doesn't like Barack Obama is racist than it is to dig deeper, start a dialogue, find out what could really be behind this opinion.

 

A reporter can fit together an easy, crisp little story around the fact that Barack Obama is black, that Sarah Palin is a woman, and that these qualities attract and alienate certain voters. It would be difficult, however, to go beyond the "ism" buzzwords -- beyond this gross homogenizing of the American people -- to discuss why voters hold the opinions they do, why they value certain things in candidates, why other things don't appeal to them.

 

The sooner we step up to the task of discussing what's behind our differing opinions rather than ism-ing them away, the sooner we can really take that huge step forward that we've all been hearing about.

 "-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me."'

- Matthew Broderick as Ferris Buehler

Elections are full of the much maligned -ism.  Every possibility if -ism is explored for each candidate.  If a candidate is white, then his or her potential racism is made an issue.  If the candidate is black then the racism of the public is central (Washington Post).  If the candidate is female then the country is too sexist to elect her.  If the candidate is male he may be too much a sexist to effectively govern a half female country.  There is so much ado about the -ism that one might agree with Ferris and want to be rid of them all, as if that were possible.

The truth of the -ism is that they are simple ideological constructions people erect in order that other people can understand a complicated idea.  Could Joseph McCarthy have rallied the country to almost tear itself apart over the state run program to forcibly reallocate property and remove rights of owners for said property for the United States? Not likely.  But he could rally people against communism.  At the most basic level and -ism is simple shorthand.  

The issue with the -ism comes when they are used to define people as opposed to ideas.  Once you label a person a communist, that is what they become.  That communist is no longer a person and become just a classification.  This can come in handy when we deal with scores of new people every day, but it is also an inherent weakness in our thought processes that conspires to damage our good judgement.  As an example of such a failure it is not widely appreciated how many Russians died defending their homeland in World War II (about 10.7 million).  They were communists and not even American communists.  By virtue of that fact they were far less meaningful to learn about in history class.

-Isms make ideas easier to digest.  But we must remember that some indigestion is good. It tells us what ideas are actually are worth eating.

Earlier this year I read an opinion column in the Kansan that made me laugh out loud.  In this opinion column, the author inferred that if Barak Obama was elected president, America would have conquered the demon of racism and we would be a happy utopian society complete with rainbows, unicorns and smiles.  Interestingly enough, he went on to say that electing John McCain would send us all straight to hell.

Aside from being a prime example of the bipartisan idiocy that is ripping our nation's jugular to shreds, the naivety of the author had me a bit bemused.  Can anyone realistically believe that racism will ever be conquered?  This, a nation that was founded by slaveholders?  This, a nation that was founded with the blood of thousands of Native Americans?  This, a nation that, for some reason, still has states that wave the Stars and Bars over Old Glory? (As a Floridan, this one hurts.)

Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia - The most popular videos are here

Tragically, racism is one of those ugly historically ingrained truths that will forever tarnish our nation, no matter how great it may be.

Take a look at the furor over Barak Obama's middle name, for instance.  Yes, it is the same name as a now-deposed Iraqi dictator.  Does this have any rational bearing on the election? No. But it certainly had bearing in the minds of West Virginia democrats when they resoundingly voted for Hillary Clinton in their primary. 

There is absolutely no magic panacea for the cancer of racism in our country.  Yes, the fact that people are ready to accept a minority as president is a step in the right direction, but we can never expect the fight against ignorance to ever be fully won.

I know that when I riot, I bring an expensive camera with me.

Seems I have this in common with University of Kentucky student photographer Ed Matthews, who, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, was charged with felony rioting outside the Republican National Convention September 1 in St. Paul, Minn.

Matthews and his camera were photographed by Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke in the thick of the riot as cops used pepper spray to subdue the crowd. Though Matthews and the other photographers present insisted they were not part of the riot, police went ahead and arrested everyone in the vicinity.

I also have in common with Matthews the fact that I am a student journalist. And perhaps it's because of this similarity that I am intrigued by what unfolded next.

According to a follow-up article by the Associated Press that was posted on the First Amendment Center Web site, AP photographer Matt Rourke was also arrested at the time of the riot, but was released uncharged just hours later, while Matthews, along with fellow student photographer Britney McIntosh, were held in jail for two nights and charged with felony rioting.

The AP also reported that police kept the cameras Matthews and McIntosh had with them at the Republican National Convention.

The pictures Matthews and McIntosh had taken somehow permitted confiscation of their cameras, whereas Matt Rourke--at the same event, arrested at the same time--got to keep his camera, and is thus the reason we have photographic documentation of what occurred.

The larger question here, evidently, is if members of student media have different rights than their professional counterparts. And should they?

In my opinion, no.

The police treating the student journalists differently than "real" journalists implies that student journalists are simply "play" journalists. That the work we do is somehow not as significant, not as real as the work of someone perhaps only a few years older than us.

Student journalists do not plagiarize. We do not make up sources. We do not show bias. We do not commit any of the cardinal sins of journalism

Yes, we tend to make more mistakes than our professional counterparts. Yes, our work often cannot rival that of people who are paid to do this job and don't have to balance it with classes, homework and other jobs.

But I've never met a fellow student journalist who, in doing his or her job, thinks, "Well, it's okay if this is sub-par, because I'm only a student." Or, "This doesn't really matter; I'm only working for a student publication." 

What if we really did think like that?

Student journalists don't expect to be treated the same as professional journalists in the sense that we score the same high-profile interviews or get invited onto Larry King's panel.

 

We do expect, however, to be treated the same when it comes to having the same basic legal rights afforded to all other members of the media.

This is not a time to cry.

This is not a time to bemoan the death of journalistic innocence.

This is the time to celebrate the coming of age of the University of Kentucky photographers!

These boys, nay, CADILLACS of JOURNALISM went through the Bar Mitzvah of the reporter at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.  After getting bathed with mace (the wet t-shirt contest of the professional journalist), the boys were whisked away and imprisoned for three days on trumped-up charges of gross misdemeanor rioting.  Alongside them were real professional journalists, doing what real professional journalists do. In this case, they were trying to cover a (supposedly) public event.

No longer are these photographers fresh-faced children.  No, they have become something more.  They are steely-eyed, gravely-voiced JOURNALISTS.  They have gone through the trials and tribulations of the professional reporter and emerged none the worse for wear.

The torture of the journalist is what makes the profession what it is.  We desire to inform the public above all else; above our safety, above our comfort, and oftentimes above our own best interest.

This is why we should exult in the pain of canceled interviews and calls unreturned.  We should bathe ourselves in the pleasure of police interference and crooked politicians.  We should scream in ecstasy when battered by overzealous riot officers.  We should get a hidden satisfaction from sitting in prison cells for no specific reason.  All these things remind us why we report.  The work is hard and the trials are many, but we persevere because we are journalists.  Seek the truth and report it.

I do realize there is an inherent sexism to this post.  I apologize to any and all offended parties. 

When the epic Tom Waits epically interviewed himself, he was asked (by himself) what was wrong with the world. To himself he replied, "We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance..."

'Ole Tom said a mouthful. This sage observation can be applied broadly to many things, but specifically it brings to mind 24 hour news coverage. Even more specifically, it can be said of election coverage in 2008, a year still fully embedded in the "Information Age." In many ways, the internet has made it more treacherous to be a politician than ever before. Anything you say can and will be used against you (on youtube) and will be commented upon by legions of disgruntled web surfing trolls (again, on youtube).

Recall George Allen's "macaca moment" which single handedly derailed his campaign. This world in which every second counts has forced politicians to become slicker than ever in their public appearances which could be good or bad depending on how you look at it. But, in effect, we all lose out when politicians are hijacked by their own sound bytes.

The average citizen pursuing election coverage online is typically met with a barrage of sound byte headlines or pulled quotes and in many cases, flat-out irrelevant controversies such as the recent "Palin Pregnancy Conspiracy"

Despite the tired old argument of the bias found in CNN or Fox or wherever, the web has made it even easier to narrow one's scope to their own particular view. If someone were to solely view Huffingtonpost.com day after day, they would have a very different version of events that is tailored to very specific tastes. The internet, like many things in this world, is a very powerful tool when used judiciously. Subscribing to sound bytes with no depth and following sites that only affirm our currently held beliefs are just as bad or even worse than not being informed at all. We have a responsibility to follow 3 "D's": Diversify our browsing for variety of coverage, Demand better, more in-depth coverage from our sources and ultimately Decide for ourselves what content we should retain to make informed decisions.

The future of democracy in an information age will ultimately be decided by just how responsible we, as citizens of the state, can be with the abundance so that we may (as Mr. Waits encourages) sift out the knowledge.

Our nation is more fractured and factional than ever, especially in an election year that will bring a definite regime change to our country.  The Republicans and Democrats are up in arms, using all outlets possible to reach the people of the nation with their own special message.   

This is by far the most internet-conscious election in our nation's history.  According to the Pew Research Group, almost a quarter of the nation regularly uses the internet to gather information about the election (almost double the amount in 2004).  Candidates have begun to work on networking sites like Myspace and Facebook to aim for the younger vote. The internet has become an easily accessible window to the world, and the people of the nation have begun peeking out it. 

But is this new media consciousness a positive for the election?  The internet has become a notorious breeding ground for those who claim fact when they opine, and media personalization is becoming one of the greatest threats to our collective political mind.  When people don't have to hear or face what they don't want to, their ideas are never challenged.  They become infinitely more fanatical. 

This is my warning to the people of this great nation: don't insulate yourself.  The internet may be a wonderful tool, but always try to understand the view from across the aisle.  Use the internet to broaden your views, not reinforce your own preconceived notions.  Our liberty, freedom and democracy depend on people coming together to find what works best for the whole, not walling themselves off in their own bubble until election day.