As I learned about the lesson this week, I thought that news was news for information. Many people have mentioned, why do we care about things that don't affect us personally? So when the news papers print a story about Ebola in a country thats 5500 miles away, who wants to read it? What about printing the story of ISIS beheading innocent people? Why read about it? Unless you are infected or kidnapped then why bother right? A funny thing, we say we don't care, but I think we do. Then what is our problem, our justification, in saying that made headlines? The simple answer is mass broadcast and social media. We heard the story already. We know the facts and by the time it makes print....we don't care. News becomes old news because its not new at all. So what about a story like this......
Police found him “in a somewhat compromising position… in a back room of the club” — alone with a topless stripper wearing only a G-string. Davis was forced to the ground at gunpoint by police after they interrupted his lap dance. He kept to his “sitting position” the first time he was requested to hit the floor and had to be ordered a second time to lay on the ground before complying.
That is a story about a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. That happened in 1998 where he said he was just at wrong place at the wrong time. Did this hurt him? Well considering it was a small news story and not really broadcast nationally. What about the incumbent?........
Davis currently has a slight lead over Brownback in the contentious gubernatorial race. He hit back at the current Kansas governor in his statement to Politico by pointing out allegations that associates of Brownback are under investigation by the FBI for involvement in an influence-pedaling scheme surrounding the governor’s attempt to privatize the state’s Medicare program.
Seems this story has in fact helped the challenger gain a few points....he was only covered locally for the most part and people tend to forgive and forget.
Jason, this is an excellent post. I think we do have a tendency to forgive and forget, until it has a direct affect on "my four and no more." We minimize what the media reports until it is our child that has gone missing, or our jobs that have been lost, our house that is destroyed by a storm, or pur parents who were robbed at gunpoint, our grandparents without healthcare. No affect, no relevance!
ReplyDeleteI think the time speaks for the difference in reaction. In 1998 few people had access to the internet, even fewer access to social media. Stories of governmental waste and fraud now attract more attention as citizens love to hear about it. Garber (p. 22) tells us, “societies use, legal normative, structural, and economic mean to control news media within their countries… the press generally heeds [these rules] because it craves public approval and fears government or private sector retaliation.” The press would have suffered significantly if it failed to cover this story. They would have failed their watch dog purpose.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you here, we are always searching for the next big news story to sink our teeth into, and when we find it we throw the old one away. For instance, the Trevon Martin incident. Up until the fairly recent Ferguson incident, how many times in the past year was the older story reported on, I personally don't recall seeing it maybe more than two times. The unfortunate truth is that we are all about flash, and as soon as one story loses it's "flash" we throw it to the way side.
ReplyDeleteJason, I think you make some very interesting points in regards to the way people read the news and decide if they actually care about what is happening or not. I think that it is a matter of perspective because it depends on what stories have an actual effect on you personally or not, as to whether you care about it. All honesty, I believe that everyone cares about what is going on in the news, no matter what they say. They reason being is that what we see on the news we might often wonder if this could possibly happen to us, or if it might effect us in the near future.
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