Become An Educated Media Consumer
A couple of weeks ago, CNN fired a senior producer, Chez Pazienza from it’s show “American Morning” for blogging. His blog Deus Ex Malcontent is a personal blog about his life and misadventures. He gives his opinions on current issues but before his firing, didn’t write about CNN or his work there.
He announced his firing on a post on his blog. One of the things Pazienza wrote last week:
CNN fired me, and did it without even a thought to the power that I might wield as an average person with a brain, a computer, and an audience. The mainstream media doesn’t believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they’ve never been more wrong.
Now I don’t know Pazienza from Adam, but he makes some good points about the news business on his blog. How the hierarchy, more so than at any time in history is only worried about the bottom line instead of telling the story. How the impact news can have on society is totally discounted and the “public trust” is non-existent.
There is no such thing as an objective journalist and because of that I’m always telling people they need to become informed media consumers. Kind of like at Syms, where an educated consumer is their best customer. Learn who owns what in the television business. Find out that GE owns NBC, Bravo, A&E, AMC, Sci-Fi and USA; that Disney owns ABC, all the ESPNs, SOAPNet, and Lifetime; that Viacom owns CBS, Showtime and BET. Figure out how many radio and TV stations are all owned by the same small group of corporations. Understand how all those very incestuous relationships can affect what you see and how it’s presented.
If you read a newspaper, read the name of the person who wrote it and then Google them. Learn not only who they are, but what their biases are, so you can make informed decisions about what they tell you.
If you don’t, you becoming a mindless foot soldier in the land of media saturation and make no mistake about it, the humanity of us all is at stake.
And that’s my speech for the day.