Fixing the Media, Not Blaming It by William

Fixing the Media, Not Blaming It by William - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

My topic will focus in the recent event of when America was thrown into turmoil when 18 year-old Michael Brown, in the process of committing a crime, was fatally shot by police officer Darren Dean Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Protests and riots soon poured onto the streets all across America in outrage of the tragic death of Michael Brown. Courts were convened and a curfew was placed in the city in response to the widespread unrest.

Both the far-left liberal democrat and the firmly conservative republican would both agree that the incident did not need to happen. Sure, fingers can be pointed to countless contributors of the the killing. One could justifiably blame the American values for letting situations like this to escalate and become commonplace. One could put evidence in the argument that residual racism in America is to blame. The debate could be made that our police force needs to be repaired and a differing opinion could state that it’s our education system in low level income communities that is the root to the tragedy of what happened. These would have all been productive discussions. Even if discussions may be uncomfortable or divisive, at least solutions would be forced to be examined.

But of course, in a time of grieving and anger for the whole city of Ferguson, Prosecutor Robert McCulloch chose to not lay responsibility on the possibility that there were serious problems in the community, police brutality, poverty-ridden neighborhoods or any other social problem that may have contributed to the killing of Michael Brown. Instead McCulloch made a scapegoat out of something that takes the responsibility to change from all of us- he blamed the media.

What’s new? Ray Rice blamed the media after he was charged with domestic violence. Amongst sexual assault allegations, Bill Cosby blamed the media. Both Republicans and Democrats blamed the media for giving rise to, ironically, their own party’s democratically-chosen candidates- Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Americans have repeatedly blamed the media for prominent social issues such as the rise in mass shootings, racial injustice, teenage violence, body image and even the lack of gender-equal kids toys in Target.
Can this be true? Is the media to be the blame for everything wrong with our society? In the Orson Welles sci-fi classic 1984, an unseen “Big Brother” entity molds society to conform to its will- is it possible that Welles’ novel is becoming a reality and “the media” is shaping our opinions leaving us powerless to do anything but point fingers back at our “Big Brother”? While few Americans may actually believe in the conspiratorial beliefs of an all powerful being encompassed in the media, still, a vast majority of Americans have no qualms about continuing to blame the media for their societal woes. My purpose here would be to illustrate how misguided such media-blaming can be and to explore productive, realistic solutions.

The point needs to be made that in capitalist America, it’s up to you to decide what to consume just as it is your decision whether to eat oatmeal or sugar cereals, and that decision will drive grocery stores to merely provide more of the same of what you like. I would make the point that Pew Research, BBC and Reuters are all widely available, we just need to stop getting our exaggerated, polarized news from Buzzfeed articles on Facebook.

I would not make an argument that the media isn’t harmful, biased, inaccurate or sensationalized. I acknowledge the negative effects. One does not need to look deep into history to see that media has produced rhetoric that has been exactly that- extremely harmful, biased, inaccurate and sensationalized. The Spanish-American war was incited largely because of sensationalistic, exaggerated takes on the oppression of the Spanish government in Cuba which led to international war and loss of life. In a more recent example, 11 republican competitors struggled to even communicate their most basic platforms to the public as Donald Trump enjoyed hundreds of hours of free media exposure which led to many poorly-informed or unengaged American voters. These are evidences of the effects of the media on the general populous. My purpose is to shift the focus from these negative effects of the media to our responsibilities of how we influence it and what we should do to fix it.

I would invite the listeners to imagine a world where media represents the ideals of society, where we consume and reward the media that represents the best in us. Instead of the attention and promotion of violence in our media, we would be reading about acts of love and service. Instead of speculating on slander of the personal lives of our politicians, we could be educating ourselves on policy, goals, and progression of our country.

I would invite listeners to better ourselves and invite better media follow as a result. I would extend the invitation for listeners to try to recognize that poor media now is merely a result of our poor media consumption habits. The media is our responsibility: to reward the outlets that we see as good and fair or punish the media that we see as harmful and biased. The reward system is our media consumption habits. My goal would be that we all take ownership in the current state of the media now and make the personal decision to determine what media will exist tomorrow.