We are working on a new episode for the podcast that will be looking at issues in the world of journalism. With thanks to my partner Adam Croom, we will be talking with a guest about the new ways that journalism seems to be going.
Are these exciting times? Is that excitement also a cause for great concern? is that great concern coming from what media means to people now?
It seems pretty definite that criticism of an issue also has the unintended consequence of promoting that issue. There was a great episode of “On The Media” that was questioning what it is that the media “gets wrong” when dealing with far right nationalists:
Lois Beckett [@loisbeckett], senior reporter at The Guardian US offers a compelling analysis of what the characteristics of the coverage mean for doing this story. Some familiar analytics come out
- Reporters need to know the history of white power organizations so that they are challenged when misrepresenting themselves
- interviewers need to be careful not to normalize hate groups
- we should never forget how capable we all are of harboring racist thoughts and ideas, and to be reflective of how we think about identity issues
- between anti-racism and pro-racism is the largest group, people who think of themselves as anti-racist but who do not see how much of that racism is baked into the social and cultural structures that surround us
This podcast is something that I will talk about on MATEOTW today, since it has much to say about how journalists need to think about the stories they tell, the words they write, and the pictures/video/sounds they collect and edit and distribute.
