We are all affected by the media, as we watch the news on TV or some chat-show, or we turn on our computer screens we are given information that, to us unknowingly, can be one-sided. We are also wary of walking down streets on a Saturday night by ourselves, or scared of sirens which remind us of a war we've never been in. In Port Chalmers the fire siren whales as if it were alerting of a bomb-strike in World War Two, it sends a chill down my spine every time I hear it, most of the time of which is just to test it, to see whether this relic still works. The RSA building is close by it, I wonder what they think...
Everytime I hear a siren now though, it reminds me of Christchurch and the chaos after the earthquake. We have been fed so much info that I find it disrespectful. On the day and for days afterwards they had a 24 hour program about the developments, or lack thereof. While it does inform those who have family they haven't heard of, they probably just wonder if it was one of theirs who was pulled out of the rubble of a bookshop. During the two or three days of repeated footage, we only really heard of the bad stories, or just the CBD. And that was on because of the B. Suburbs remained uncommunicated and I remember reading an article about a group of 20 living in a garage who, after a week, still hadn't been visited by any emergency personnel. They were of course looking out for the B. People in the Pyne Gould are dead, those in an eastern suburb only lost and hungry, possibly infected. Who should we try save? The dead or the living? I found it disrespectful. But I guess the New Zealand media hardly ever has any big stories to comment on.
I went to an open lecture the other day on Media and racism. I didn't think it was all that great as it only focused on the anti-Indian riots that took place in some Australian universities last year and the year before. However the talk did raise some interesting points.
The media, in my eyes, is a structurally nationalistic system in many senses. Each country puts more focus onto the particular country it is based in than any other. This makes perfect sense, the citizens watching or reading that piece of media are more likely to be interested in a catastrophe up the road than one elsewhere. It is racist too though, economically if that makes sense. The west payed a lot of attention to Australia when the floods were devastating the Queensland cities and coasts, but no attention was payed to Brazil and even less to Sri Lanka. I think this is because there isn't as much money put into these economies and Australians are culturally much more similar to Europe or the US. The same happened with the Chinese earhquake. It stopped existing once the bigger one rattled Japan. Yes it was larger, but China left the maps pretty quickly. Those damn reds!
The media is sensationalist because that is what people want. We would rather hear about a wedding than about an election, even though the outcomes in South Sudan and Niger are uplifting for democracy. But that raises the issue of Africa. Don't they just fight all the time? Aren't they just too corrupt, maybe too tribal still?
Should public tv spend more time on world issues? Should its programming be more welcoming to cultural minorites? Should it be that unbiased precedent the public would want to see?
Sagacitas, Veritas et Libertas.
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