By Jennifer Mckean
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 10, 1997

Media Play

Arizona Daily Wildcat Jennifer Mckean

Are you seduced by the effects of mass media? Of course you are, you're reading this column. Our lives, whether we like to admit it or not, are governed by the media. A multitude of outlets anticipate our every conflict, so they can counter it and make yet another statistic out of us.

We are all subjects in a covert experiment conducted by esoteric media people. We watch TV, listen to the radio, view advertisements and billboards everywhere we go, read newspapers and magazines and use the Internet as if it were the Bible. These are all wonderful tools. With the outlets above, one would think our country would be full of the brightest and the best informed in the world. After all, it's the age of information, isn't it?

It occurred to me long before O.J. and Diana conquered the spotlight that Americans care more about being entertained than they do about being informed. It's true.

How many of you know that Marv Albert wears women's panties? Why do you need to know that? What relevance does it serve in our lives or in the welfare of our nation? We have forfeited almost all perception of reality when it comes to people's privacy. The term "personal" might as well be in a foreign language to some of us. The mass media has gently geared you toward this point of absolute absurdity.

I would like to take a megaphone colossal enough to reach from New York to California and scream to every person in between that life is not about the rich and the famous and the naughty and the nice. There are real things going on out there, and it would be beneficial to our nation if we were interested in them.

A few years back when O.J. raced down the California highway in his automobile, do you remember what the make and color of that automobile was? Why do we know so much about the infamous white Bronco? It is portrayed by the media as the public's "right to know."

Coverage of that issue was acceptable and even necessary to a certain extent, but obsession with it only made animals of us. Our reckless hunger for tabloid slander and our lust for power, sex, and violence from the media have lead us to a clouded path of destruction.

Standing in the House Press Gallery moments before President Clinton's State of the Union Address, an emergency arose among the reporters. A national dilemma. The O.J. verdict would be expounded during the speech, and broadcasters were torn between reporting substance the public wanted or information the public needed. Dutiful politicians and journalists watched the time, anxious to attend to the many televisions in the gallery the instant Clinton concluded. Even their appetites craved a former football player over the president of the United States. Simultaneous broadcasts were aired.

We rely to a great extent on journalists to provide us with knowledge of what is happening in the world beyond our communities. It is often the journalists themselves that will not risk their "valuable" time to bring us news.

More and more journalists are fighting for opportunities to report on Mike Tyson's latest fit of rage, Frank Gifford's private love affair, Donald Trump's divorce settlements, Jon Bonet Ramsey's bed-wetting and Bob Dole's facelift.

In contrast, did you know about 115 journalists are killed each year worldwide in their search for the truth? Of course you didn't, because they are not American men and women dying, and the causes aren't issues that we would put as our lead in broadcasts or on our front pages.

Americans often don't look beyond what is convenient to their eyes and easy on their conscience. We, as a society, are providing a bad example for future generations of journalists and viewers.

In reporting on human rights abuses (important stuff), we are too often solely dependent on heroic journalists such as John Burns of The New York Times, who was awarded a 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Another brave soul devoted to real journalism is Mike Wallace, co-editor of the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes." He exposed CIA involvement in human rights abuses in Guatemala and was awarded the Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for his work.

The Committee to Protect Journalists met for the Seventh Annual International Press Freedom Awards a few weeks ago. A selected group of journalists were awarded for their bravery in reporting the news.

Among them was Ted Koppel, who received this year's lifetime achievement award. His acceptance speech was captivating and provocative, giving insight to the common threats to journalism today, particularly in America.

"Antagonizing the rich and powerful is our bread and butter," he continued. Koppel compared journalism in America to its counterparts in others nations of the world, where reporters are faced with death for meeting even moderate standards of honesty and professionalism.

"Our enemies are far more insidious than that. They are declining advertising revenues, the rising cost of newsprint, lower ratings, diversification and the vertical integration of communication empires," Koppel said.

He reminded America that we exhibit increasingly little courage in our news-gathering. We are not tortured with threats of imprisonment or death. Our threat is the trivialization of our profession.

"We are free to write and report whatever we believe is important. But if what is important does not appeal to the reading or viewing appetites of our consumers, we'll give them something that does," he said.

Personally, I firmly believe that the American public must be educated on foreign events, and we (as journalists) have the responsibility to explain how and why those events have an impact on us. But we are afraid.

Competition, earning less money and losing our audience scare us, even though we have the tools and the skills to go much farther and do more in human rights journalism.

Until there is a drastic transformation in the media and the society we live in, it will always be more intriguing to hear about Chelsea's love life than the investigative work on drug gangs.

Jennifer McKean is a junior majoring in journalism.