Democracy Needs a Media System that Lives Up to Balanced Reporting.

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Abstract

/p><p id="9cf2">As part of free-market systems, the media is more bound by economics than social duty. To booster viewership, television news has changed, putting more focus on emotion, first-person perspective, and immediacy. Cable TV amps up the subjectivity, with more argument, more use of opinion, and personal interaction, as opposed to objective information or analysis, which is fact-based and measurable. In short, they describe and shape reality at the same time. Multiple opinions cannot, and should not, be determined by a few wannabe-objective individuals who otherwise, by human nature are wired to be subjective.</p><div id="5caf" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/is-there-such-a-thing-as-collective-responsibility-c78a79504eac"> <div> <div> <h2>Is There Such a Thing as “Collective Responsibility”?</h2> <div><h3>What we see out there through the window continually seems to surprise us.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*T_EBF3nkZ3y3fDHn)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><h1 id="a2c1">Systemic racism</h1><p id="9314">In the wake of George Floyd’s death, systemic racism is in the news a great deal, igniting protests peaceful and violent, with the tragedy also being used by some to destroy, steal — and worse. In one case, looters in St. Louis shot and killed David Dorn, a highly respected black retired police captain, as he was trying to protect a pawn shop.</p><p id="6f48">What we see lately is how news media gravitates toward the most vivid and dramatic individuals and actions of the protest. TV coverage often shows long shots of burning cars and buildings, rock-throwing, and other violence. All of which makes for good visuals for news stories. Often, these actions are being carried out by a small fraction of the protesters, or in many cases by people who aren’t part of the protest movement, comprising agitators who have nothing to do with the movement but want to take advantage of the opportunity to engage in violence, damage property or steal.</p><p id="51a1">

Options

A few influential news media houses are playing judge, jury, and executioner to an increasingly captive public. They tell a story that Black Lives Matter protests are “mostly peaceful,” even while fires are blazing fiercely within camera view. We have been assured that those seizing streets and ousting police are promoting, in the Seattle mayor’s words, a “summer of love,” even as their camp becomes the scene of multiple homicides. They avoid mentioning the fact that homicides and murders in New York, Chicago, and numerous other cities have suddenly risen far above the numbers for 2019 and previous years. Most of the dead are black, but apparently, those black lives don’t matter.</p><div id="040b" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/judge-and-be-prepared-to-be-judged-4ec86782eecf"> <div> <div> <h2>Judge, and be Prepared to be Judged.</h2> <div><h3>Nothing is Exempt from Moral Judgment</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*8IAM698zXUYjNN6uvtmJKg.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="4f6a">Violence results from the frustration of those who feel they are not given a voice when problems persist like racism, inequality, and unfair treatment. When social discontent is in the air, news can change perceptions, and perceptions often become a reality. And the appearance of a disparaging report in the press can cause emotional responses to crises to overtake rational strategy unless effectively rebutted.</p><p id="77d4">Pessimism and the need to change racism arises from a good place. There is a growing awareness that dominant narratives can be repressive, which often reflect the interests of the powerful and tend to silence the voices of communities on the margins. A successful strategy is grounded in an accurate perception of distributed information because it will trigger policy choices that won’t backfire. It should not be about the ability to disrupt, block, and destroy; rather, it should be about the ability to construct, enable, repair, and build.</p></article></body>

To interpret an event is to lend it meaning and make it understood.

We are drowning in a sea of stories about our world, a daily flood of news through the Internet, combined with the traditional media. Democracy needs a media system that lives up to the standards of supplying information and representation in an objective and balanced reporting. However, despite the existence of the objectivity ethic, journalism has not always lived up to expectations.

Flexible measures of subjectivity and objectivity.

The media plays a crucial role in narrating instances of civil disorder where they describe issues at stake, and ultimately validate or delegitimize the actions and causes involved. News shorn of its context and driven by emotion can do damage to our understanding of a given situation. Processing the news is processing knowledge, and the media must reconstruct reality in ways that will allow them to survive and become influential. This process may imply considerable distortions of authenticity and flexible measures of subjectivity and objectivity.

The traditional mission of journalism to deliver reliable and useful information is under extreme pressure. Excessive commercialization, driven by restructuring of an increasingly global media market, is sapping the confidence of readers. Reporters claim to seek and tell the truth in their news stories, yet they regularly foster a haze of untruth that obscures the meaning of events and distorts our perception of reality. Evidence of that is shown by the MSNBC producer, Ariana Pekary, who resigned on July 24, 2020, from the network, citing in an open letter her moral misgivings with the commercial news model. In her letter, she wrote: The network block “diversity of thought” and ‘amplify fringe voices.’

As part of free-market systems, the media is more bound by economics than social duty. To booster viewership, television news has changed, putting more focus on emotion, first-person perspective, and immediacy. Cable TV amps up the subjectivity, with more argument, more use of opinion, and personal interaction, as opposed to objective information or analysis, which is fact-based and measurable. In short, they describe and shape reality at the same time. Multiple opinions cannot, and should not, be determined by a few wannabe-objective individuals who otherwise, by human nature are wired to be subjective.

Systemic racism

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, systemic racism is in the news a great deal, igniting protests peaceful and violent, with the tragedy also being used by some to destroy, steal — and worse. In one case, looters in St. Louis shot and killed David Dorn, a highly respected black retired police captain, as he was trying to protect a pawn shop.

What we see lately is how news media gravitates toward the most vivid and dramatic individuals and actions of the protest. TV coverage often shows long shots of burning cars and buildings, rock-throwing, and other violence. All of which makes for good visuals for news stories. Often, these actions are being carried out by a small fraction of the protesters, or in many cases by people who aren’t part of the protest movement, comprising agitators who have nothing to do with the movement but want to take advantage of the opportunity to engage in violence, damage property or steal.

Violence results from the frustration of those who feel they are not given a voice when problems persist like racism, inequality, and unfair treatment. When social discontent is in the air, news can change perceptions, and perceptions often become a reality. And the appearance of a disparaging report in the press can cause emotional responses to crises to overtake rational strategy unless effectively rebutted.

Pessimism and the need to change racism arises from a good place. There is a growing awareness that dominant narratives can be repressive, which often reflect the interests of the powerful and tend to silence the voices of communities on the margins. A successful strategy is grounded in an accurate perception of distributed information because it will trigger policy choices that won’t backfire. It should not be about the ability to disrupt, block, and destroy; rather, it should be about the ability to construct, enable, repair, and build.