Media Exaggeration by Geezer

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Media Exaggeration

POSTED BY: GEEZER
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 03:55
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 3:55 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Niki's post concerning the CNN special report, "Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door" reminded me of another case of what I consider media exaggeration causing problems.

Last month Madame G and I spent a few days on Florida's 'Lost Coast' between Cedar Key and Port St. Joe. Had a nice time and some good food. However, I did notice a lot more closed businesses that on my last trip. Talking to folks, I found that they'd had little or no problem from the oil spill, and that the fishing and seafood were fine. However, due to the media giving the impression that the entire Gulf was nothing but a huge oil slick, the tourists just didn't show up in anywhere near the usual numbers last summer. Tourist-dependent businesses that were just making it couldn't stand the loss of revenue, and had to fold. Also, cancellations of summer rentals left a lot of property owners in foreclosure and the market for their properties depressed.

Sort'a makes me wonder how many of the 'crises' we see in the media are real, and how many are just self-fulfilling prophecies created by all the hype around them.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 4:21 AM

FIVVER

I've got a friend that has a rental condo in Gulf Shores and she got killed. Fortunately she received a payment from BP and didn't lose the condo. She'll have to see how the occupancy is this summer. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are buying commercial time here hand over fist.

The problem is The Beast. A few years ago I was working with some kids launching model rockets. Somehow CNN found out about it and sent out a crew. They weren't really doing a story but shot a bunch of background footage. I was talking to the photographer and mentioned that it must be impossible to fill a 24/7/365 broadcast with stuff interesting enough to keep peoples attention. He said yeah, they called it The Beast.

A recent example is this controller falling asleep at Reagan National. Big, fat, hairy deal. Airliners fly all the time into uncontrolled airfields. The procedures for doing so are taught in a student pilots basic ground school. Uncontrolled airports are much mor common than controlled ones. When they couldn't contact the tower, the pilots used those procedures and the aircraft and passengers were never in the slightest danger.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 5:42 AM

CANTTAKESKY

It's a good point, Geezer. Everyone "exaggerates," or hypes, even nice independent media that I like. Even Amazon or Youtube or Twitter have their little "hype" menu, tailored to your interests. There is no other way to stay afloat financially.

Fivver summarized it well: The Beast. If you want to stay in business, you gotta hype what your audience wants to hate or fear. Nothing grabs people's attention more than hate or fear.

As I said early in the TEPCO thread, everyone loooooves to feel righteously indignant (myself included). So all the media has to do is hype stuff people feel indignant about, and our image of the world gets skewed accordingly.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 6:45 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:

Sort'a makes me wonder how many of the 'crises' we see in the media are real, and how many are just self-fulfilling prophecies created by all the hype around them.

I was taping cnn's World One recently to get a first look at the days news, but after a couple weeks I took it off my list. Just a lot of filler, same sound bytes and film edits over and over, lots of Nick Roberts and that mad lady in the reporters' fancy Libyan Hotel, like she's the only person to suffer in this. (It's only on because she came to them, they didn't have to work for it, all that footage basically dumped in their laps so they're going to draw it out as long as they can)
Sad because the medium has such potential - Frontline is/was a great show.
One of the things that gets me reaching for the remote the quickest is the solemn, serious reporter asking some "rebel" with a gun for their story and listening like it's pure tragic gold (sell it!) or even remotely the truth of what actually happened. That dude will say anything to keep the bombs dropping. Lie? Of course! The reporter knows that, we know that, we know the reporter knows it, sometimes when they look into the camera I think they're going to just start laughing, "does anyone watch this stuff and believe it?" The end result is: I watch the news and still feel like I have no idea what's really going on.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 7:23 AM

BYTEMITE

I'm referring this thread to DT, he likes the ones that may have psychological ramifications or point to mind tricks.

As a side note, they do that about everything, and the end result is dangerous.

Compare the population underreaction for Katrina, to the hyped damage that a hurricane hitting Florida was supposed to do the previous season.

May apply to terrorist threat levels.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 9:58 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Oh, hell, "If it bleeds, it leads" has been here since news began...check out the history of "town criers" in old England, much less newspapers from the time they first began! Media of every form sensationalizes, it's the same as PEOPLE...remember the old "telephone game"? Where someone says something to someone else in a circle, and they pass it around...by the time it gets back to the original person, it's either changed beyond recognition or made a WHOLE lot bigger. So who's surprised newspapers, magazines, TV, the internet all do the same thing?

I get sick of the repetitiveness of TV news, that it's pretty much the same coverage of each story on all the different stations, they go over and over something when nothing new is happening, and they have big banner headlines "BREAKING NEWS" the day after the news broke. I'd love to see any of us do better, however. It's all too easy to diss anything and everything if we want to, but it comes down to our own responsibility to search out news if we really want to, or try to ferret out reality from hype as best we can.

I learned how it is way back in our Loma Prieta earthquake. I got phone calls from friends all over the country worrying about me because of what they saw on the news. The media chose to portray the Marina District (which was built on fill, so it shook like jello when the 'quake hit), the broken panel on the Bay Bridge and the collapsed freeway in the East Bay. Those were actually the only dramatic results of the 'quake, but given that's what they focused on, the rest of the country got the impression San Francisco was in ruins. That's when I "got it", because it happened to me, and I've never forgotten it.

Anyone who doesn't think media of every kind sensationalizes, slants, chooses the most dramatic things to focus on, and portrays disasters by using the most graphic material they can get, is naive. Or maybe it just needs to happen to them to answer the question.

I don't mind it, I just know what's going on. But I appreciate the coverage, as sometimes it's pretty impressive (the tsunami, for example, about which amateur video is STILL coming in...every damned piece of it enough to make you gasp!, the uprisings in the Middle East, etc.), and it brings things to people's attention which helps motivate people to help. What bothers me far more is the endless attention paid to celebrities who have done nothing to deserve it.

On that subject, I hear Charlie Sheen has a TOUR going...what the hell is he going to do?? Stand on stage and make a further ass of himself??? He has no musical talent, he's not a stand-up, he's no actor; aside from the "can't look away from a wreck" aspect, why would people pay good money to see him?? Anyone know?

I'd like to see less repetitive coverage of stuff, FAR less coverage of people like Sheen and Lindsay Lohan (who I wouldn't even know existed if it weren't for constant media coverage of her idiocy), etc., and coverage of more interesting things than the same old story over and over. I don't expect it, it doesn't surprise me we don't get it, such is life.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:37 AM

DREAMTROVE

Niki is right. On this one, I think that depressing real estate is the goal, as it may have been in Katrina. Ive considered that the whole gulf spill was staged a a real estate scam. The American real estate scam economy is now the largest economy on the planet, due to the influence of derivatives and mark to market rules.

Geezer,

All of those thoughts occurred to me at the time and I said nothing because I considered it a desirable result. That's my favorite part of the country, and it has been out of my price range. Also, I was aware that the current close to shore runs in the other direction, and would carry the spill off-shore, all plusses. I might try to pick something up, let me know if you have any ideas.

I really don't care for condos, maybe a small island ;) or something very crackery.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 1:45 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

If you want to see hype and panic, try suggesting that most Muslims aren't terrorists. Or even that most terrorist plots in the U.S. since 9/11 *haven't* involved Muslims in any way.

THAT will get you an over-hyped, panicked reaction.

In three... two...

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011 2:32 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Good points Geezer, I hope you guys had a nice time by the way. Yeah, the media totally blows stuff out of proportion. In the same way they can and do also downplay things they don't see as important, that happens less often I think, but it is certainly done, especially in the American media.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, March 30, 2011 3:55 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Bloody obvious, really.

See Also: Mockingbird, Church Comittee, Family Jewels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Also, the whole inanity/celebrity, LOOK HERE! LOOK THERE! and OH LOOK, PUPPIES!... like a desperate stage magicians fumbling hand fake, anything to keep you from paying attention to what matters.

Because once the question of why we "need" them rises, so too does the real nature of their terrorist protection racket become clear, as Will Grigg notes here.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/03/inside-fbis-terrorism-fac
tory.html

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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