The media shoud be responsible... but so must we

First of all, let me abandon the semi-academic tone of this blog for but a moment. This is my first ever blog: “Hey Mom, check this out: Your degenerate son is blogging!” Now I can proceed…

What messages should and should not be carried in the media? What do such ideas say about the media and about society? How do we decide what messages are allowed and who decides? These questions have been raised both in our recent Media and Ethics discussion classes and on this blog, and there is still much to contribute to this discussion.

Whereas once, media was only for the relatively high literate members of society, now even the most uneducated and inexperienced may fully partake in some channel of mass communication. More than ever, the media’s output is closer to the general population’s understanding than ever; programs such as American Idol might not teach us anything new per se, but they reflect elements of our own realities back at us and this successfully resonates with millions of people worldwide.

The tradeoff for mass accessibility is that the media reflects more than ever the inconsistent, warts-and-all values shared by huge numbers of people. The lyrics of Prince’s “Darling Nikki”, describing a woman masturbating with magazines, may have outraged Tipper Gore enough to successfully lobby for the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker on album covers, but listeners adored “Darling Nikki” and the album Purple Rain on which it was featured sold in excess of 16 million copies. The public may have soaked up any publication invading the private life of Princess Diana but her death prompted an outpouring of emotion across the world of unprecedented proportions. And the grief suffered in the wake of the devastating 9/11 attacks vastly overshadowed the concern about the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens killed due to the US invasion of that country. Stepping back and viewing these issues with a fresh viewpoint, many public norms seem nonsensical and inconsistent.

Most of the time, however, the media, not the public, gets the brunt of the attacks about morality. Mass media has been vilified by countless commentators for perverting the morals of the public and wasting its potential for the enrichment of the populace. With programs such as Robin Leach’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” acting as poster boys, the mass media has been accused of creating the cult of the celebrity, romanticizing the lives of the glamorous and encouraging ordinary people to emulate them to cure feelings of inferiority. Stoking the unconscious desire to find self-belief in the approval of others, reality television shows have flourished, removing the last justification for celebrity – that it puts on a pedestal those with commendable talent or achievements. And with the media as an obvious method of selling products, electronic and print communication has become infiltrated by consumerism; news programs cannot carry stories that harm the interests of advertisers, product placement abounds in movies, and newspapers are paid to report on matters that financially benefit private interests.

This is surely not what nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill envisaged in On Liberty (1859) when he advocated the importance of the media in the free circulation of opinion in the search for truth. Instead, the connection between the media and the owners of capital seems to have stopped much of the media dead in its tracks towards this role.

Or has it? If the media can be seen as a public sphere in the vein described by Habermas (The Public Sphere, An Encyclopedia Article, 1964) as a space of discourse where opinions are voiced and assessed, then perhaps the media is performing as it should: as a place where ideas are introduced, modified, and either allowed to seep back into the public consciousness or discarded. If the media is indirectly produced by, or made to appeal to, the broader population then, as a human-created entity, the media cannot possibly produced perfectly polished and finished messages. Like any group of people, the media absorbs all kinds of imperfections, and to expect otherwise is unfair.

Once competing ideas carried by the media are visible to all, then the work begins. Such ideas become clearer, their context is more apparent, and they are easier to critique. Issues in our everyday lives are often too close to see clearly and get submerged beneath the complications of our daily realities. However, in the media, such issues are expertly articulated and allow a better opportunity to assess them. If People Magazine, for example, disgusts us with its intrusions into the lives of others then we might come to understand the follies of gossip and apply this back to our own lives. If this happens enough times, then the message is passed back into the media and its output is revised.

Although there are many voices of wisdom in the media, there are many voices anything but wise. Whilst messages that truly benefit the public should be an ideal for mass communication, this ideal will only ever be partially realized; such is the way of the world. Perhaps instead, we the audience need to fulfill our side of the bargain: to be able to view the messages from the media with a critical eye and be ready to separate what truly benefits out lives (whatever that may be) from what does not.

References:
Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince, p.70 - Alex Hahn, 2002
The Public Sphere, An Encyclopedia Article - Habermas 1964
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill (1859)