In the final lecture Steve Molk talked to us about his blog and how he ended up in Journalism. But coming to the end of the Semester made me all existential and I thought about what I would like to do in my journalism career. What would I do if I could do anything. And I am by no means sure of it, but there is one company that I have been in love with for a few years now that do exactly what I would love to do.
And they are The African Attachment.
They are an independent production company in South Africa that do short films and documentaries and music videos. I found out about them when I was watching a short documentary on one of my favourite bands, Ashtray Electric, and discovered that they made the film. They then proceeded in making music videos for four of my other favourite bands (yes, four!):
And they also worked on the movie Golden Globe winning District 9. Now they are working on a documentary on Ryan Sandes, the Ultra-Marathon runner.
They are exactly what I want to do. I want to do documentaries on people, people that interest me. I want to work with musicians on their music videos (it sounds too good to be true). I want to affect people with the work I do, make people think, make people change. I want to make a difference.
In our last Jour1111 tute, we watched the documentary Page One about the going-ons of the New York Times.
I did not expect much, when we started watching this movie. But I was absolutely blown away. I know that part of it is the fact that I am absurdly in love with documentaries, but I was also moved by the whole industry of the New York Times. How that one newspaper has such a high reputation and such a history of being the leading newspaper- a newspaper that literally shaped the world.
If you haven't seen it I will give you the rundown: It follows the jobs of a few people in the New York Times and shows how the newspaper is struggling under the new media landscape of online news. It shows how the news is picked and published but especially focuses on how the newspaper is struggling in a dying industry.
What really moved me was the passion that the people have. They all work so hard to be the best, and despite the odds they keep going. And they are all really passionate about journalism. Which I find really inspiring. I want that. I want to have such a passion for my work, I want a purpose like they have.
The Times is a paper newspaper. And I am definitely a big supporter of paper newspapers. I know I am young, and of the new generation and supposed to be Internet and Apple obsessed, but I still have not gotten the hang of online news. I like it old-fashioned. I like the big pages and the fact that the news only comes around once a day. Internet media makes me uncomfortable. Because I feel like online media has so many competitors that they only write what we WANT to know, instead of what we NEED to know. It seems too much like a factory, pumping out stories every minute, whilst I can see the passion in the journalists at The Times.
Which brings me to my conclusion:
We are living in the age of LOTS of SHIT information.
Instead of Encyclopedias and books that have taken years to investigate and gather information, we have Wikipedia. Lots of information, yes, but unreliable at best. And it is hard to know what is true, because every other website also just copies off the great Wiki.
And then for news we now have hundreds of news websites, millions of blogs and billions of Twitter feeds and status updates on Facebook giving us the news. Not exactly great quality journalism there.
And instead of great films and documentaries, we now have millions of the strangest and worst videos on YouTube.
I know there are good things too, but why must there be so much bad things? We don't need that much. I sometimes long for the days when it was simple; when journalism was still one or two newspapers on a street corner and everything moved a little slower.
For our final content lecture, we talked about Investigative Journalism. We all intuitively know what it is about- looking deeper into a story and finding out the real truths that people want to keep hidden.
I think this is a fascinating branch of journalism. And as a few of the quotes Bruce mentioned talked about- shouldn't all journalists be investigative journalists? I think in answering that question we come to the answer that I posed at the beginning of the semester- Isn't everyone a journalist? Everyone is publishing stories, doesn't that water down real journalist's work? I think journalists that are really passionate about their work and telling a worthwhile story and spreading the truth, are real journalists. That is what separates the average Joe blogging on the Internet to a full-blooded journalist. They are dedicated to going the extra mile to get the story.
Investigative Journalism is about giving people a voice that are not heard, it is about telling what is important and making sure the public knows what is really happening and making people accountable for their actions. In a way, I think it is the purest form of journalism. It is separate from agenda setting and news values and government control, it is there as a service to the public.
One example of Investigative Journalism that has really changed the world is the Watergate case, where Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the political scandals of President Nixon. It is still remembered as one of the most famous cases of Investigative Journalism. There have been many other reporters to uncover truths through their investigation. It is all about following you gut and seeing the story behind the story.
I have an incredible respect for Investigative Journalists. It is not an easy task, to go after a story that could be dangerous and to risk so much to find out the truth. And it is a very important task, one that is journalists' responsibility. These journalists really have to be passionate about their work to go in search of a story.
It is sad that Investigative Journalism is under threat because of the lack of money in journalism. And the constant newscycle puts more pressure on journalist and media companies to get a lot of story NOW, instead of there being time to get a real story. But I believe that as long as there are people passionate, and there always will be, Investigative Journalism will still stay alive.
I really could not resist dedicating a post to the amazing art of tie dying.
For a event my college had this semester, we all had to dress in 70's themed costumes. So for the first time in my life I tie dyed a shirt. And let me tell you, it is more than a little bit addictive. Who knew how cool tie dye could actually be? It's quite easy to do too.
1) Get a tshirt, tie dye (from one of those cheap everything-stores), rubber bands and a sink.
2) Tie the shirt either in random places, or a certain way to make a patterns. I actually cannot help with that, I had no idea what to do so I just tied in in random places. I recommend Googling it.
3) Wet the shirt. I did not at first and it did not end well.
4)Dye different sections with different colours. Carefully over sink. And if you, like me, really want to have blue dyed hands for another 3 days (a great conversation starter - "Uhm, like, do you know that your hands are like blue?") I recommend not using gloves. Your choice.
5) Leave it in a plastic bag for a day.
6) Rinse out. Well. Fun fact- if you get rained on whilst wearing a tie dyed shirt that has not been rinsed out well, your skin will become multi-coloured. Also your underwear.
In light of my recent post where I mentioned the sport curling, I decided to try some Agenda Setting of my own on my absolutely favourite sport in the world:
SPORT STACKING
It is the grueling sport where competitors fight against the clock to stack and unstack cups. It's all explained in the name really. Just watch the video.
I can't even believe that anyone could move that fast.
Agenda setting is a bit of a difficult concept to get your head around. Like gravity and evolution, it is merely a theory. And this theory states that mass-media have a big influence on what the public deems important and how they perceive issues. Basically, it states that the more coverage the media gives an issues the more important we think it is. It is one of those theories that we can immediately see proof of. If we see a story circulating the news and Internet and social media, we will obviously think that it is very important because so many people seem interested in it. MY theory is that if the media started deciding that the sport curling (it's actually the most fascinating sport) deserves a lot of media coverage, it will easily filter down to the masses and make the sport well known. And this could be true for anything.
Agenda setting, to me, is very much tied up with News Values. News values are how the media picks what is important, and agenda setting is what happens to the public as a result of the media picking which stories to publish.
The first result of Agenda Setting is that the public deems a topic important. The second result is the more significant result and that is that the way media portrays a story influences how people think about that issue. Bruce described it as "the pictures in our heads". This is very true; what the media tells us is almost always the only side of it we ever hear and that will be the way we perceive a story too.
Agenda setting involves the way news stories portrays issues, how they tend to go with whatever topic is popular that week (bandwagon effect) or when and how they choose to publish a story. This can be good in they way that they convince the public of health issues and things, but it can also be bad if they twist the truth to fit their own agenda.
The only example I can think of off the top of my head, is one of Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa (I sincerely apologize for all my examples always being South African ones, it just always seems to end up there).
A few years ago in an interview President Zuma reportedly stated that he had a shower after having unprotected sex with a HIV-positive woman to reduce the risk of getting the disease (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4879822.stm). This caused quite a stir in South Africa, because of SOuth Africa's HIV problem and the absolute inaccuracy of that statement. Trust me, I have been throught eh schooling system, and every school child from age 7 to 18 is constantly (to the point of near madness) being taught about every single aspect of that disease. Well, this statement caused a very prominent and famous cartoonist to draw Jacob Zuma with the a shower head over head in every cartoon he drew from then on.
How this relates to Agenda Setting ( I believe) is that because the media chose to magnify this issue and constantly remind the public about, made it a very prominent story. It could have gone unnoticed if the media did not report on it, but they did.
The theory has definitely been affected by new media, because information is given to us constantly and everywhere. And the influence of media can only stretch so far. People can only be influenced up to a point, and then they will make up their own minds.
