Note: For some reason this didn't get posted when I thought it would. I just now realized it has been in draft stage for about week. I debated posting it now. I had moved on and wasn't really thinking about it since. Still, seems a shame to waste all that writing.
I scared myself a bit this morning. I saw an article on Facebook discussing the news analysis on Ferguson. Since it touched on my previous concerns (i.e. reporting that can't even agree on basic facts, like whether the cop was injured or not).
I shared it to my friends, and added a few comments on why I found this disturbing. Aside from the racial issues, the grief of Michael Brown's family, and all the other Ferguson issues.
In addition to the incident itself, the way the news is being handled disturbs me because we're not able to agree on basic facts.
In Iraq, I remember reading a a couple of conflicting accounts of what happened on a street in Baghdad. I remember thinking to myself "this is a sign of how bad it is. These reports are clearly contradictory. Either a fight happened, or it didn't."
When you can't agree on basic facts, there is no middle ground, and someone is lying.
When you can't even agree on the basic facts of the event, all you have is spin and the power to create whatever reality you want.
I thought to myself, 'at least our news has to have SOME basis in reality!!! Reporters are supposed to investigate, and find credible sources, and check their facts. We can argue about interpreting the events, argue about how we frame things, but the basic checkable facts should be there.'
And here, today, in 2014, we see a major news agency presenting the facts they want to believe, without truly fact-checking any of it.
That's where I left off. The scary part was when I remembered a paper I wrote as an undergrad over a decade ago...I don't remember the entire point, but I was looking at our involvement in 'military operations other than war'. Yugoslavia. Bosnia. Somalia. Haiti.
One quote has always stuck with me - "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan." (I'm not entirely sure if it was from this article, but a lot of what is in here captures what I remembered reading.) Actually, this whole paragraph is worth quoting in it's entirety:
The breakup of Yugoslavia is a classic example of nationalism from the top down -- a manipulated nationalism in a region where peace has historically prevailed more than war and in which a quarter of the population were in mixed marriages. The manipulators condoned and even provoked local ethnic violence in order to engender animosities that could then be magnified by the press, leading to further violence. Milošević l gave prime television time to fanatic nationalists like Vojislav Šešelj, who once said that the way to deal with the Kosovo Albanians was to kill them all. Tudjman also used his control of the media to sow hate. Nationalist "intellectuals," wrapped in the mantle of august academies of sciences, expounded their pseudo-history of the victimization of Serbs (or Croats) through the ages. One of them seriously asserted to me that Serbs had committed no crimes or moral transgressions at any point in their long history. Worst of all, the media, under the thumb of most republican regimes, spewed an endless daily torrent of violence and enmity. As a reporter for Vreme, one of the few independent magazines left in the former Yugoslavia, said, "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan."
Are we there yet? No. Will we ever get there? I sure hope not. Five years ago I would have said no. Al Qaeda supposedly was trying to ignite a race war in the US and assumes that we will eventually have one, and I thought them laughably ignorant about how our nation works.
But when I see the reporting on Ferguson, the increasingly divided news, the way people segregate what they see and hear and only read what they already agree with, it kind of scares me.
I scared myself a bit this morning. I saw an article on Facebook discussing the news analysis on Ferguson. Since it touched on my previous concerns (i.e. reporting that can't even agree on basic facts, like whether the cop was injured or not).
I shared it to my friends, and added a few comments on why I found this disturbing. Aside from the racial issues, the grief of Michael Brown's family, and all the other Ferguson issues.
In addition to the incident itself, the way the news is being handled disturbs me because we're not able to agree on basic facts.
In Iraq, I remember reading a a couple of conflicting accounts of what happened on a street in Baghdad. I remember thinking to myself "this is a sign of how bad it is. These reports are clearly contradictory. Either a fight happened, or it didn't."
When you can't agree on basic facts, there is no middle ground, and someone is lying.
When you can't even agree on the basic facts of the event, all you have is spin and the power to create whatever reality you want.
I thought to myself, 'at least our news has to have SOME basis in reality!!! Reporters are supposed to investigate, and find credible sources, and check their facts. We can argue about interpreting the events, argue about how we frame things, but the basic checkable facts should be there.'
And here, today, in 2014, we see a major news agency presenting the facts they want to believe, without truly fact-checking any of it.
That's where I left off. The scary part was when I remembered a paper I wrote as an undergrad over a decade ago...I don't remember the entire point, but I was looking at our involvement in 'military operations other than war'. Yugoslavia. Bosnia. Somalia. Haiti.
One quote has always stuck with me - "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan." (I'm not entirely sure if it was from this article, but a lot of what is in here captures what I remembered reading.) Actually, this whole paragraph is worth quoting in it's entirety:
The breakup of Yugoslavia is a classic example of nationalism from the top down -- a manipulated nationalism in a region where peace has historically prevailed more than war and in which a quarter of the population were in mixed marriages. The manipulators condoned and even provoked local ethnic violence in order to engender animosities that could then be magnified by the press, leading to further violence. Milošević l gave prime television time to fanatic nationalists like Vojislav Šešelj, who once said that the way to deal with the Kosovo Albanians was to kill them all. Tudjman also used his control of the media to sow hate. Nationalist "intellectuals," wrapped in the mantle of august academies of sciences, expounded their pseudo-history of the victimization of Serbs (or Croats) through the ages. One of them seriously asserted to me that Serbs had committed no crimes or moral transgressions at any point in their long history. Worst of all, the media, under the thumb of most republican regimes, spewed an endless daily torrent of violence and enmity. As a reporter for Vreme, one of the few independent magazines left in the former Yugoslavia, said, "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan."
Are we there yet? No. Will we ever get there? I sure hope not. Five years ago I would have said no. Al Qaeda supposedly was trying to ignite a race war in the US and assumes that we will eventually have one, and I thought them laughably ignorant about how our nation works.
But when I see the reporting on Ferguson, the increasingly divided news, the way people segregate what they see and hear and only read what they already agree with, it kind of scares me.
No comments:
Post a Comment