The other day I found myself in a discussion about media – print, broadcast, and social – and having to explain why I thought live coverage via social media, by individual eyewitnesses, is a wonderful thing.
The room more or less agreed that print media is on the way out. Folks have been saying that for the last 10 or 15 years, and they’re probably (mostly) right. We aren’t sustaining a demand for tons of printed, 12-hours-old information as our primary source of news. Now, as a secondary source, and especially as a source for more in-depth coverage, I think there’s still a lot of value in traditional print news. Even with that, though, the great majority of “print” has turned into digital print.
There was small debate about broadcast news. We all agreed that the quality of news on television varies wildly. Pretty much all the 24 hour news channels have had some horrific gaffe, usually in the form of reporting on rumors way too soon, or in how badly biased one channel or reporter/talking head is, politically speaking. In short, I believe quite a lot of people have learned to take news with a grain or ten of salt.
“Who really cares about breaking news?”
When I expressed enthusiasm for having access to live streaming video, tweets, pictures, and commentary from average citizens on the ground, I found that I had to explain why that’s such a good thing. “So what if you hear about the riots in Egypt right now? That has nothing to do with me.”
Not necessarily, but take for example the filibuster by Wendy Davis a few weeks ago. I heard about that on Reddit, then on Twitter. I turned on the news channels and saw nothing, even though the filibuster had been going on for hours. This was a big news story, and it hadn’t filtered its way up the chain of reporters. Because I caught that, I could (had I so chosen) have driven down to Austin to lend my support or protest. I could have become a part of history in the making. (History, after all, is just one damn thing after another*.)
Or take 9/11. One of my fellows argued that there was no need to watch the whole thing as it played out, and in fact it was rather detrimental to do so. There was so much speculation, and so little known, early on in the process. But having the information sooner did matter to people. It mattered to those on the other planes, to those with loved ones in New York and Virginia, to anyone near New York that could get to safety or lend an immediate hand, and to anyone who had planned to travel on that day. It mattered.
It mattered to the rest of the country. The US is a big place, and we all compartmentalize and separate as much as possible. We tend our own yards. We also have things that bring us together, to make us feel like a tribe. This was one of those things. Tons of people gave blood or volunteered. A medium-small percentage of that actually had an impact on the disasters themselves; mostly, local blood banks benefited. But we joined together, we did stuff, we were a giant tribe for just a little while.
I digress.
Individual Matters
Something that I find amazing is the individual perspective. To contrast: news stories are supposed to report the news, but in more than one way they really do tell you what to think. The stories themselves are sorted and chose – after all, you can’t report on everything – so even the selection of what makes it to the screen informs me of what is and isn’t important. Further, reports are researched, prepared, edited, and approved. I get a very polished take on any given event, if it comes from a corporate source. This can be a good thing, of course; there’s more due diligence (usually…often…debate amongst yourselves) to a report prepared by professionals, than by one guy on site with an iPhone.
But I’m already in the habit of taking news with a grain of salt. And I get on the front lines of what it’s really like to be there when an Occupy protester live streams encounters with armed police, or when a country celebrates because it has removed the powers that have wronged them. What interest me about life and history isn’t what date this war happened…it’s what it was like for the people when the war happened. I get more information about what it’s like to be a citizen Over There.
Reach out and touch someone
It’s a core belief that understanding leads to compassion, and compassion leads to good things: more acts of kindness and charity, less violence, better world. Getting messages and media from people all over the world literally let me see their point of view, and decide what I think about it. Reading the differing viewpoints on an event let me see that there’s more than my side to the debate.
In short, print and broadcast news tell me about events; social media puts my hand on the world.
Happy days,
Jen McCown
www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen
To hear more about this and more techie-adjacent stuff, join us Friday nights for an all new season of DBAs@Midnight: 11pm Central time at webshow.MidnightDBA.com (Rated M for “mature”.)
*Modified from Elbert Hubbard’s “Life is just…”