As we first started arriving in Phoenix for the ASNE High School Journalism Institute, events a halfway around the world were bubbling and now have erupted in the streets of Iran. Most of the coverage on the major networks has been footage from citizens who have posted their images and videos on youtube, picasa, and other social networks. It was mentioned by so many of our speakers, the way the landscape of journalism has been awaken by the new technologies that citizens worldwide are using to communicate. It is no wonder that institutions, schools and journalists, and the media, are trying to make sense and pull in the reigns on the phenomenon.
I get my news updates from a source that I follow on Twitter. What is happening now is a war of control of the media. While people inside Iran are trying to broadcast their accounts of what is happening, the government is cracking down on any kind of communication. I was a bit irked when some of the mainstream media started reporting about the tweets, it put some of these tweeters at potential harm. Some suspicious tweeters started following other tweeters. You really had to know and trust who you were getting linked with.
On the one hand, it is an exciting time. The people can serve to report where the media cannot access. In situations like the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police, the riders who happened to film the shooting brought justice and made the public aware of the power of a simple camera.
On the other hand, it is going to take some innovation and investment by journalism institutions to come up with ways to maintain a sense of fairness, professionalism and purpose so that journalism can protect the powerless and let the truth be exposed for the public to judge.
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chowsir
Posts
I find it amazing the mechanisms are now in place allowing us to watch the social unrest following Iraq's election. What will they think of next?
ReplyDeleteJust a few years ago we'd get periodic updates from a cable television talking head, a nightly news report then a daily newspaper story, and before that, from radio newscasts and daily newspaper stories.
(Back when I was a kid, CBS news was Douglas Edwards as a talking head for 15 minutes, followed by a talking head at the local TV station for 15 more.)
Now it's 24-hour coverage of social unrest as seen through the eyes of ordinary citizens via social network sites.
As a source (an AP Government/Economics instructor) for my opinion piece on justifying the journalism program in the curriculum told me Sunday, "who controls the media controls society."
For those who don't remember when radio had news broadcasts, the saying went (I think), "Hear about it today on the radio, see it tonight on television, and read about it in tomorrow's paper."
Mark Webber
Vidal M. Treviňo School of Comm and Fine Arts
Laredo, Texas
Just for the sake of argument, what happens to all this interconnectivity if the electric grid goes out? Do we descend into chaos? I am not arguing that we shouldn't do this as I am not a Luddite. I just think it might be built on a house of cards and he "who controls the electric grid controls society." I read Colmac McCarthy's novel, The Road, and it really scared me. Sometimes, no matter how advanced we think we are as a society, we are an electric and gas outtage away from terrible things. What will media be then?
ReplyDeleteJoanna Greer
Kennedy High School
Silver Spring, Md.