The Charlottesville Virginia, white nationalist demonstration set off all of media's dog whistles at once. The real problem stems figuratively from the tip of a melting iceberg.
If there is a more important time for the resurrection of the idea of newspapers in North America it is now. The idea of newspapers needs to find its footing in the digital world of everything. The idea of local, and a recorder of traditional information needs to be moved up several notches.
The boggy men have arrived revealing themselves in large screen time and very, very small numbers. Television journalism is allowing itself to be swept away. The measure and balance of newspapers is muted by monetization.
They are tearing down statues, but one person says they should be building more statues. The answer may well be more statues to the great Americans of the Civil Rights movement. This might be the right thing to do. It is the right time. It is a broken windows approach. Don't change history, change the present.
Television “magnifies”issues but often issues are mishandled and through mishandling, they repeat and get worse.
The run up to White Supremacy weekend in Canada was journalism at it's worst. The speculation and transference from the US to Canada was disrespectful to Canadians. We have our racism but it is ordinary ,run-of-the-mill racism .There is no comparison. The US has a melting pot where impurities rise to the top ,they do not mix with the rest. These impurities get skimmed off and become of landfill that eventually leaches into the ground water to reappear decades later. Canada has a salad bowl, a person can take out the things they don't like, or change the dressing. Our politics are the fruit punch , sweet to the taste,but its effects will still rot the teeth over time.
The shear emotional bias that television projects cannot be transferred to print. Emotional play has become a powerful propaganda tool for media with an agenda. Politics and media merge. Strategists for political parties rattle on scoring points for their side in national debates.Arm chair journalism has put poorly outfitted frontline journalists in danger. Professional demonstrators are like storm chasers they come prepared.
This time may be comparable to pre WW2 with anger being whipped up across the entire globe. It seems almost ridiculous that any local news at all about politics crosswalks ,fires and car accidents should be taking up valuable space.
For the long and detailed answer see, Collapse-How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (Pulitzer Prize winner for Guns,Germs and Steel. The final chapter deals with resulting mass migrations caused by uprisings and war with its heavily weighted roots in climate change and environmental damage. Actual roots, being dug ,depleting soil, deforestation by loggers, mudslides,over fishing then social unrest.
Desperate migrations overwhelm existing social programs of much too wealthy first world countries. They find that they are not as wealthy nor welcoming as they thought. This is an environmental book, climate change is real and it explains how it effects human kind ,using examples in Montana, collapses of the Mayan, Viking , Rwanda, Haiti, and the author also offers hope as many resource companies are choosing to work with environmentalists.
The problem is made worse by intentional meddling , molding of internet information has taken over from traditional and effective propaganda to produce a super-bug ,a propaganda like contagion. It now spreads through new media not fully understood by the public nor by news media itself.
It seems like some in politics see cracks that can be exploited.
Newspapers are the gate keepers for Western Freedom.
The newspaper business has lost it's edge, but television has lost it's mind. The short story format and the short attention span of audiences are partly to blame.
Television news is easier to control by internet genius because of it's predictability. The internet is now the major go-to for journalists.
This present story telling form has been genetically weakened by conversational journalism. The experts and the generals are everywhere but the level of noise is deafening. The level of speculation for any story is distracting from eventual discovery of hard facts. Facts and investigations take longer to verify. Speculation has no limits. The conversational aspect during the wait is proving to be too much disruption. It whips up too much riotous emotion.
In politics someone always benefits from disruption. It seems like players outside the borders are benefiting the most.
The world is being divided up as journalism frets over a smoky landscape where nothing is clear. Nothing is clear here, but outside of the metaphorical smoke is a lot of real smoke and real fire.
Author Jared Diamond's , “rape and run” resource extractors have been busy leaving mudslides and ruin , and the populations left behind shell shocked and angry, and now starving. When food prices rise beyond what the average family can afford , and we are talking about bread in many of these countries , revolution and collapse occur. The Middle East, and Africa are collapsing and their migrations and new alliances will overwhelm unsuspecting First World borders. Social unrest and anger are everywhere. These are symptoms of economic breakdown , political breakdown , information breakdown , social breakdown.Canada and some of it's resource companies have exported our carbon not reducing our consumption.
China and Russia see different agendas but they are both in Africa and the Middle East.
The sound of conversations is so loud the banging on the doors of Fortress North America cannot be heard.
Media covers symptoms very well, and even tries ,too hard, to make it all more than it is.
The newspaper business picked a bad time to monetize its product. Television news picked a bad time to pick sides.
The smart talk seems to be on a couple of television programs seen late at night or early Sunday morning.
If the newspaper business can start to see through the real smoke,the real fire and find the brightest and the best speakers with a world view then local readers will be better severed.
But monetized words on a page will not do. The editorial comment power needs to be free everyday and the first thing the readers sees when the web page opens. The the strength of the message need to be magnified on social media.
Everything needs to be authentic, world centric ,in all ways including ecological. Create an full ecosystem of reporting from the blades of grass to the tallest buildings. The newspaper business had that with paper, from the forest to the front door. That is the ethos of the business, with all it's wort's. Opinion by Ken Gigliotti
*To be fair , the good people of Charlottesville were ambushed and did respond to the challenge of this bused in group of WS invading their city with documentary film crew and national media circus in tow. A real S/tshow for any community to be subjected to. I have been a fan of country music , for the last several years and invite people to listen to how popular southern music deals modern day attitudes of people from this independent and maligned part of the United States. YouTube song by Montgomery Gentry ,Some People Change ,Brad Paisley's ,This is Country Music, Carrie Underwood's Tornado, Tim McGraw &Faith Hill's (how to ) Talk to a Girl, Taylor Swift's (any song by her) or Mean a song about a bully , she was way ahead of curve when this came out.
Topic: Charlottesville is not Canada-Newspapers needed more than ever (Read 939 times)