What sorts of images come to mind when you think of the homeless in America? Depending on where you’ve lived, you may have met them first hand, or your perception may come from their depiction in media. I was curious as to how the media (news, specifically) treat homeless Americans. I read a couple of articles, all interesting, but one in particular caught my attention. Edward Erikson wrote “The Representation of Homelessness in the Nightly News” for a peer journal in 2006. Despite its age, I thought his interpretation of the situation was very interesting.
According to Erikson in his article "The Representation of Homelessness in the Nightly News" the number of homeless Americans is growing with every year, totaling something like 3 million by 2006 (and still climbing) yet news coverage has not increased to match it. Erikson argues that media, which has, historically, been the voice of the upper class, rather than the poor, ignores homelessness.
Erikson writes:
"During this time, it was common for a network to devote between 3.3 to 11.6 minutes, per year to homelessness. Comparatively, the CBS, NBC and ABC nightly news programs devoted well over 378 minutes, or 6.3 hours to crime in 1988 alone."
Granted the article is five years old and there are newer studies on homelessness out there, but I chose it to this one up because I was very struck by the conclusion Erikson reached. Why does journalism, very proud of its role as society’s watchdog, ignore the homeless segment of the population (other than the fact that they probably don’t watch TV news)? He cites Timothy Cook's writing on structural bias in "Governing With the News" as the reason behind this underrepresentation.
According to Cook: “For any news medium, whatever the source does must be packaged into a narrative. Not only must the story have protagonists and antagonists in conflict, but the sources’ actions must move the story along to a new episode.”
Something like crime or natural disasters fit this narrative structure well. There is a story arc, and plenty of middle-to-upperclass individuals (one tends to seek out those like themselves for information and opinions) that can be interviewed for the news package.
When you think about homelessness, however, it does not work with the news package narrative. There are very few camera friendly or 'official' first hand sources, as you rarely see anyone interviewing a homeless individual for their opinion on a subject. Every case is different, and does not fit neatly into a process, such as the legal proceedings associated with crime.
Erikson wrote, "the news can report on the condition of homelessness in urban or rural America, but chances are the condition will continue just the same in the days to follow. Thus, the story does not have any movement… [and] may not even be considered a story."
I found this very intriguing, as I don't think about, whether it is homelessness or any other 'non-narrative' subject, just how important the story is to news.
I think we are in a special position as Gaylord students. We have a better grasp on what 'makes news' than the general public. I haven't had a single class here that didn't stress, or at least ask at some point 'What's the story?' Individuals don't consume news if it doesn't hold their attention, and stories hold attention.
The thing I've never thought about however, is what do you do if you are not, in fact, newsworthy? Erikson actually gives suggestions at the end of his article as to ways homeless advocacy groups can make themselves more 'narrative' for news outlets.
Though I can’t say I agree with everything Erikson writes (I disagree that news coverage can ever be 100% ‘fair’ as when every single voice gets equal time, we just end up with noise) it really wasn’t so much what he said, but that I’d not heard it brought up before.
My question is, should the news media strive to make important subjects more newsworthy, or is it up to the individuals to grab our attention? How ethical is representing a subject or event differently for the sake of coverage?
Here is the article itself, if you have the time it is worth a read;
I think TV news networks do this because they know crime gets them ratings. Homeless coverage doesn't.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I abhor broadcast. The stress of ratings (this is happening in print too, finally) pushes them to cover things that we may not need over other stories. Yes, crime is important, but not when it is just "Oh man, someone was murdered." They spend a majority of the time worrying about that than they do other serious problems.
It is so frustrating. I wish it would change.
Hey Ame, thanks for the comments on me blog. Here is what i was talking about earlier! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/photoshop-tool-airbrushing-revealed_n_1119212.html
ReplyDeleteSince you had a few posts on the horrid photoshopping going on in the wild. I figured you'd be interested in something like this. I kept thinking when i read about this. Could this be the end of photoshopping in general.
To actually comment on the post. It's easy and piggybacking to say that poverty doesn't get ratings. The harder point to make is that our national agenda setters, mainly corporations and rich politicians, don't care. That is a tough thing to say because our nation is tremendously charitable, but the elites who decide the overall narratives don't talk about poverty. If they did. They wouldn't spend another moment on anything else. Because quite frankly. It's possibly the most pervasive and horrible thing going on in the country.
ReplyDeleteI personally do all I can. I've given all I can, whenever I can to anyone who needs help, but I'm poor, and a single man. If the national media harped on poverty all day and everyday people would do something about it. More than they are now. Good article!
I doubt it will be the end of photoshopping totally. They don't mention in the article what the program seems to look for, specifically, but if I had to guess it has to do with meshes (The ever popular 'liquefy' tool) which still leaves more subtle stuff free.
ReplyDeleteIf not then I would ask if it can tell the difference between a photo I just color corrected, as opposed to edited more fully.
Then there is print media. How well does it fare with scanned images as opposed to purely digital ones?
That said, I'm really interested to see its application, hopefully it will make sure less skilled individuals won't be allowed to edit the photos, in the very least.