What Michael Massing is saying about the modern news media, or at least about its relationship with the government, is that it amounts to nothing more than a cheap condom. Its lies around harmless, is slipped on when needed, and is discarded just as fast. And I have to agree with him.
The New York Times especially lacked the balls to deliver any serious war reporting. They pulled all their punches during the march to war, and then made a pathetic attempt to save their image by printing a tepid letter addressing the fact that they’re really a bunch of pussies but are going to try to ask hard questions in the future.
At least Massing was smart enough to offer solutions to the problems he presented. He suggests that the major imbalance in modern news media is a lack of alternative perspectives. He suggests having more reporters on staff that can speak Arabic so that they can get a perspective from the Iraqi side of the conflict to counter the narrow view of the war presented by the American armed forces. This, I agree, would have made American coverage of the war much more informative and more on par with coverage from foreign news outlets.
What I found most intriguing in the book, though, was not Massing’s analysis of the media failure leading up to the war, but his description of the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera and how it was established. Apparently back during the cold war the Arab world was divided into two relatively easy to understand groups, the secular left and the religious right. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow the secular left disappeared and religious extremists began to take their place. It’s quite strange. But now the Emir of Qatar is trying to use the money his country has amassed from its natural gas reserves to try and create a secular democracy, and one of the steps that was taken to help foster that democracy was the establishment of an all Arab news network. That’s how Al-Jazeera was born. Now, even though Al-Jazeera has been described as “the Arab fox news” it is still a strong alternative voice in the news media. It had people on the ground in Iraq from the beginning and was one of the only places to get an Iraqi point of view concerning the conflict. Also, its employees are composed of both religious and secular Arabs, which gives me hope that secularism can still somehow remain relevant in the region despite overwhelming pressure from extremists.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Consumer Map
Things change. That’s undeniable. But why do they Change? Because of natural forces? Or is change propelled by the ulterior motives of certain individuals. The answer is of course both. But what I’m most interested in is which has more effect then the other.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.
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