I found an interesting article today on MSN.com about the Internet. Congressman Tom DeLay recently criticized Supreme Court Justice Kennedy for doing his research on the Internet. Should judges peruse the Web rather than rely on traditional rules of evidence? Is it a viable resource? What do you all think?
posted by KW @ 3:53 PM
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I commented on this blog as well as this blog. Check them out, they both have interesting things to say about media and issues surrounding media today!
posted by KW @ 4:00 PM
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I found another article relating to media today in the New York Times. It discussses the downward spiral that NBC has been facing with its morning news show, The Today Show, with Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. It blames the failing ratings on Katie Couric's lack of chemistry with her colleagues and the show's lack of sparkle. Staunch competition from ABC with its recent string of successful shows such as Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy has also been a factor. This article demonstrates just how many factors can contribute to the presentation of news and television shows.
I know that I tend to prefer certain news shows over others because of the host of the show. For example, I watch World News Tonight with Peter Jennings over NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw because I prefer Peter Jennings as a news anchor. I think this shows just how important we as an audience feel that the way news is conveyed to us, not the necessarily news content itself. What do you think of this? Do you find yourself influenced by the hosts of shows and the chemistry they have or do not have together? Have you seen this reflected in The Today Show or other news programs?
posted by KW @ 3:44 PM
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The New York Times has an article about the effects of Peter Jennings's illness on their newscasting. ABC network is apparently struggling with deciding what to do since Peter Jennings is going to be absent for long periods of time to undergo treatment for lung cancer. They are debating who will be the substitute for Jennings and who would be potential replacements if it is necessary.
The seemingly simple process is difficult for ABC, which is trying to give popular faces to their news team to strengthen it in the ratings race and determine what move will be the most marketable. This demonstrates how news is not just the facts and events, but is largely based on how it is conveyed and how it will be most appealing to media consumers. Peter Jennings's popularity is going to be difficult to replace, and any move that ABC makes will likely be a profitable and appealing one that will help ABC overtake CBS and other networks with stronger news teams rather than creating a format which will bring viewers the best news.
posted by KW @ 12:44 PM
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Reading the chapter in our Channels of Discourse textbook on the feminist critique reminded me of a book I recently read for another class. John Berger's Ways of Seeing, a collection of essays based on a BBC program of the same name, also discusses the media and how it caters to how we are thought to perceive images in advertising and even in art.
Berger states that our capitalist society encourages images to be aimed toward a young white male, and everything in the advertisement is adjusted for that viewpoint. Women are seen as objects and are often presented in ways that are directed toward the white male for ultimate effectiveness. His essay on publicity especially connects to what we are reading. Ways of Seeing makes very interesting and eye-opening reading in terms of how we are led on by media. I'd reccommend taking a look at it if you're interested in this subject!
posted by KW @ 6:56 PM
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When I looked online for a popular media reform movement, I found Memefest, an annual international festival of radical communication. This festival is largely organized by and addressed toward students studying communications, sociology, and visual design and design arts and encourages them to contribute their individual talents to the counter-culture. Memefest got its name from memes, which according to dictionary.com are “units of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” This means that memes are like the mores or customs that make up and define our culture. Last year, the organization received over 350 submissions of responses and ideas from 36 countries in every continent in the world.
The goal of Memefest is to explore how ideas can be spread, asking its participants to “generate and replicate more positive and beneficial” memes, instead of the harmful and incorrect memes that tend to spread throughout our society, like stereotypes. Media comes into play here in spreading negative ideas by advertising and marketing industries, wasting the talent and knowledge that is possible for us as a collective society. A portion of last year’s Memefest addressed a book called Cyberwar is Coming, published in 1993, which warned of governmental use of information for ideological control. This ties into the ideas that we have recently been studying about the media reflecting certain ideologies, such as the Marxist model. Media industries themselves cater to society’s most popular memes, which are not always the most correct or beneficial ones, and last year’s Memefest pointed this out. 
Memefest 2005 asks for student submissions on Douglas Rushkoff’s Nowhere to Hide. This book examines the attempts of advertisers to convince even the most cynical and angry consumer. This year’s festival also asks for responses to The People’s Communication Charter, which according to the Memefest website is the “‘democratic manifesto’ that lists what needs to be done to right the wrongs of media and technological violence, and the prejudices inherent within it.” This subject again ties into what we’ve been covering in class about the sources of media subjects and the interference and monitoring of media content by governmental organizations and conglomerate executives. The media that is filtered through these sources tend to reflect violence, sex, and prejudices, all of which are issues that, while deemed prevalent by the media and the programming it produces, tend to be in actuality social taboos that are nowhere near as common as the media portray them to be.
This festival appears to be a large-scale, positive movement that asks students going into media or media-related fields to think critically about the way the media affects societies internationally and how media is created to affect audiences the way that they do. In essence, this is precisely what the goal of our class is, as well, demanding the next generation to think and ask questions rather than respond apathetically to the issues surrounding media that we may not otherwise even recognize to be there. I think that Memefest is definitely a step in the right direction, however small it may be, and asking the younger generation to begin thinking of and making changes to our current media problems could help later on when these very students are participating in the running of media outlets. Hopefully, Memefest and other similar media reform movements continue with their goals and eventually have success, however small it may be, in instigating change and a wider knowledge of media.
Check out Memefest’s blog. You can also submit your media-related artwork, designs, or essays to Memefest.
posted by KW @ 1:45 PM
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Darryl Stevens as a gay screenwriter
in "Noah's Arc" on Viacom's Logo
network.
I recently came across an article in the Media and Advertising section of the New York Times that talked about the recent move to create new cable services aimed at the gay market, like Comcast's Here and Viacom's Logo. These cable channels include series such as "Noah's Arc," about a gay screenwriter, and "Third Man Out," a show featuring gay detectives. This idea comes on the heels of the recent popularity of shows such as "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Will & Grace." Executives from Viacom say that they do not anticipate negative reactions to these new services.
This demonstrates something that we recently read about filling supposed gaps for certain programming on television. In this case, executives at Viacom and Comcast found that there was a marketable group that they could address with a new cable service, and they proceeded to create a niche for it. Although there may or may not have been a true demand for a cable channel completely dedicated to gays and lesbians, these media giants have created one, and have even created the belief that there was a gap in the market to begin with.
In the article, Here and Logo are purported to be an ideal venue through which to break the stereotypes of gay and lesbians, and to provide a "home" for homosexuals looking for positive messages and homosexuals living real lives. This relates back to the video that we watched in class today about representation in the media. In the film, Stuart Hall noted that characters who are created as "anti-stereotypes" don't really change the stereotype to begin with. Instead, it changes the stereotype from "natural" to seemingly fabricated.
This is a very interesting topic, and I am interested in seeing how successful Logo and Here become, and if there truly is a market that these services can be directed toward. What do you think?
posted by KW @ 8:18 PM
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There are many publications that engage in media criticism, and many magazines are devoted to this very valuable practice. Without their publication and informative articles that raise our awareness of media issues, the public may unknowingly become more desensitized and immune to the motivations behind the messages we get from media. One of these magazines is Stay Free!, a magazine that promotes awareness of media messages and consumer culture through satire and humor, along with some informative articles. Their website even has a blog where current bits of humor and mass media culture are posted. I highly recommend visiting this blog, where some current topics are parodied logos (many of which are highly entertaining) and humorous letters sent to the editors of Stay Free!.
Stay Free!, published independently, defines itself as “a nonprofit magazine covering American culture, politics, and life in South Central Brooklyn.” The magazine has been around for over ten years, publishing two issues a year in May and November. The magazine’s goal is to raise the public’s awareness about the negative impacts of media, our media consumption, and consumerism through satire and humor along with informative articles on important consumer-related issues. For example, in one issue, an article about the negative impact of Wal-Mart on workers and the towns they move into is discussed in a lengthy interview with Liza Featherstone, the author of the book Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart. The humor that is necessary to increase the impact of the topic and interest readers is found early on in this article, like many others, where the author notes: “shopping at Wal-Mart is a little like smoking crack: the low prices undoubtedly fill a need (particularly for the poor) but they only come back to bite you in the end.”
A good example of a more scathing point made by the magazine on the same topic of Wal-Mart is the satirical column that evaluates the costs and benefits of setting yourself on fire as a demonstration for the plight of Wal-Mart workers. Having considered the options available for the workers, like lawsuits, which tend to be tedious and boring, the magazine came up with a more innovative method of setting oneself on fire – a method used in the East but has not quite yet caught on here in the U.S. A cost-benefit analysis chart is used to determine that, in fact, the benefits of setting oneself on fire (media attention and the added bonus of savings from a free cremation) outweigh the costs (with the value of a human life set at around six million dollars, clothing losses, gas costs, a liter of Jack Daniels, and the cost of a match). Satirical looks like this one at a shocking method of demonstration against consumerism and for human rights is an ideal way to garner the public’s attention about a subject, and that is precisely what Stay Free! does.
The magazine is funded only by subscribers. It is distributed by many companies, including AK Press, Bernard DeBoer, Desert Moon (Borders), Tower, Last Gasp, Left Bank, Doormouse, Kent News, Marginal and OneSource. It is an independent magazine, and because it campaigns against advertisers, it does not include any advertising or do any mass marketing. Any advertising it includes is of places like local stores and services, such as a record store in Washington D.C. It also includes notices about media events, such as the National Conference for Media Reform.
Contributors to the magazine are often satire columnists, such as Joe Garden, who writes for The Onion and RoyalJournal.com. Others are stand-up performers, or editors at the Modern Humorist. The editor, publisher, and designer is Carrie McLaren. No contributors are paid for the work they do for the magazine, and readers are invited to contribute to the magazine, as well.
Stay Free! and other magazines like it are important to bring awareness to media consumption and to consumers who do not realize the effects that media has on them. These magazines play upon our desire for humor and even uses elements of semiotics in conveying their messages, such as in their logo parodies, parodying semiotics itself by making alternate meanings to advertisements and logos. Hopefully Stay Free! and other magazines like it will continue to be published to continue to ask the pressing and impertinent questions for society to think about.
posted by KW @ 9:29 PM
2 comments
It was announced today that news anchor Peter Jennings has lung cancer. I don’t know about you all, but this took me aback when I first heard about it, and felt like the news was personal. This made me stop and think – why was I so affected by news about someone whom I do not know?
I began thinking that the answer lies in the way television portrays characters and narrators. The television audience is led to believe that these people, like news anchors, are friends of ours and tell their stories on a personal basis, making the viewer feel as if the character is speaking directly to them. The goal of television and television news is to portray a real person who is talking directly to the viewer (such as when news anchors say the personal closing “good night” to the audience, as was mentioned in our textbook).
This situation just struck me as interesting in light of what we have been discussing in class and what we have been reading in our text. What do you all think? Do you feel personal connections to people on television? How does this reflect the effectiveness of television’s teller/listener connection?
posted by KW @ 9:35 PM
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