Dubious Milestones

Sometimes (okay, most of the time), I hate the media. Last night, the United States achieved the "milestone" of 4,000 soldiers dead in Iraq. EVERY news station is producing this story as if Paris has stolen Helen again and we all need to buy stock in Haliburton before they send KBR to Troy. What is it with our media and numbers? The guy who died at 3,999 is probably no less important than the guy at 4,000. Come to think of it, the one who died at 3,728 really haunts me night to night.

This is what happens when a news cycle really has nothing to say, so arbitrary numbers are chosen as news stories themselves. It's like turning the camera on a stop sign and stating that it's important to look at this stop sign because people who get into accidents by ignoring stop signs are out of control. It's a stupid stop sign. 4,000 is a number, not a story. Not an event. Not the rationale behind why we should have 8 hours of news stories all about meta stories (covering the media's coverage of the war, which is what they're doing right now).

Did something new happen in Baghdad? No, not really. Is the war turning in our favor? No, not really. Is it getting worse? No, not really. In other words, THERE IS NO STORY HERE.

Sadly, I covered this same problem at 3,000 casualties. No one cared then either.

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Ashley Alexandra Dupre: The sob story of prostitution

Well, they identified the call girl that brought down Governor Spitzer of New York. And while I generally read The New York Times, I have to admit they went overboard trying to make Ashley Alexandra Dupre (Kristen) the "victim" in this situation. She was a "$1000 an hour" hooker (in an establishment where they apparently have hookers working up to $4,300 an hour (I guess they wear party hats...I wouldn't know; I don't get out often). Now, they've tried to "humanize" her so that people will feel sorry for her because this big bad scandal has happened to her and it has interrupted her normal plan to bring peace to stuffed koala bears everywhere, or whatever it is she was planning with her myspace music career that will probably benefit from this rather than be hurt.

It's this sort of thing that leaves one wondering, why is it so necessary to give us the sob story of the poor little girl who is down on her luck (charging $4300 to have sex with a governor and knowing full well exactly what she was doing). And why should we really care?

Yeah, it bothers me that yet another girl got herself into this lifestyle. I used to see this CONSTANTLY at San Francisco State University when girls I knew would study feminist theory, convinced they were going to change the attitudes of men around the world, and then you'd find out they were paying their way through school by stripping at Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco or at one of the many other "fine" establishments that involve young, attractive women sitting on the laps of total strangers and getting them off. During one year, I discovered that of my female friends at SFSU, three were strippers at local sex clubs, two were professional dominatrices, one was a professional sex submissive, and two were straight out prostitutes (they preferred "call girls", which made them sound more respectable). Twice, I was called as their "one phone call" in the same week.

Kind of makes you wonder. Well, at least it makes me wonder.

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This Just In...Sex Sells!

CNN has gone ahead and presented yet another one of my pet peeves: Criticizing something but then turning around and doing it yourself but even worse.

Here's the news: The CEO of Victoria Secret decided that the blatant display of sexuality in their advertisements and specials was becoming a bit too risque. So, it was stated that Victoria Secret will tone it down. Well, leave it to CNN to broadcast their report where they spend the majority of the time playing the "this is a good thing because we're seeing too much" as they show nonstop footage of Victoria Secret models prancing around in their underwear. It's like protesting against pornography because it's too explicit, so you hold a pornography sit-in and show nonstop adult films to show everyone how raunchy it is.

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900 pound gorillas are the 900 pound gorillas in the room....

One phrase I'm REALLY getting tired of is the whole "it's the gorilla in the room" or "it's the 900 pound gorilla in the room". Okay, we get the point. It's a cool phrase, or at least it was back in the 20th century. This is one of those phrases used when the media goes on cruise control and doesn't actually have anything inciteful, or even USEFUL to say. A good example is yesterday when Heath Ledger died. It's sad. Sorry, he died. But the cookie cutter, fill in the blank news casts are driving me freaking nuts. No, this is NOT the worst tragedy since Kurt Cobain. No, Heath Ledger wasn't a young Marlon Brando. He had one connected movie that got him noticed. Most of what he did in the past was trashy movies. A Knight's Tale should have actually got him deported. But yes, it's unfortunate that a young actor, just starting out (a decade or so into his already established career) died. But he wasn't Sean Connery, Robert Redford or even Paulie Shore. He was a somewhat okay actor that died earlier than he should have.

Can we PLEASE lose the insulting commentaries about how all the world is mourning this tragic loss. If the whole world was, that would be one thing, but the media is saying this stuff ONLY because this is what the media ALWAYS says. It's fill in the blank newscasting. This is the kind of crap that leads to what happened on 911. After the first plane hit the first tower, a newscaster was actually sitting in front of the camera saying "And this is when the healing must begin" as the second plane was still smashing into the next building. Cookie cutter journalism leads to people learning nothing from the news. But unfortunately, it happens more often than not.

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Why academia sometimes just fails

There's a communication theory called Third Person Effect, which argues that people believe the media does not influence themselves, but that it influences other people. So, the argument goes that because people are so convinced that others are influenced by media images and stories, but not themselves, obviously people are more influenced than they care to admit. Then, the literature makes a number of possible rationales behind this.

1. The human tendency to perceive the self in ways that make us look good or at least better than other people.

2. People are motivated by a need to control unpredictable life events. "By assuming that the self is not influenced by mass media, individuals can go about their days in a media-dominated world, using media, deriving gratifications and sensibly integrating media into their lives" (Perloff, 2002).

3. People are actually influenced by the media but cannot consciously acknowledge media influence.

4. Third Person Effect emphasize cognitive rather than motivational mechanisms. (other people can be persuaded, but not them)

5. Media schemas. (Passive sheep view of audience behavior)

6. People lack access to their own mental processes.

So, all these sound great, right? Well, what if I was to put forth a possibility that shows why NONE of them may be correct? What if I was to put forth a possibility that shows that the third person effect doesn't actually exist?

Well, it's easy. What if every person who is surveyed about media just doesn't understand what other people do or know? In other words, what if a survey person asks me about other people, and I just make assumptions based on not actually knowing. I assume that media influences other people, but even though I say it doesn't affect me, I assume it has to affect others. Well, what if I'm wrong? What if there's NO effect on third persons? What if the real "effect" is that people have no clue how media affects other people? In other words, if someone asks me if media affects me, I say no, it does not. If I'm asked if it affects others, instead of saying, well, it must, I guess, I say, "How am I supposed to know? If it doesn't affect me, it probably doesn't affect anyone else either."

Therefore, third person effect goes away completely. Instead, what we have is a media bias that believes that it has more of an effect than it does. What we really have is media driving media to convince itself that it's really the driving force behind the opinions of people when in reality, what is probably happening is that more and more people are just being exposed to this false information and accepting it because the media serves as an information depot, and not the driving force.

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Our national nightmare is over

Yes, the national nightmare is over. Paris has been freed. But you know what really gets my goat about this whole thing, aside from the overstated "why is this a story?"? What bothers me is the inability of the news media to come up with a title that's original.

Fox News: The Liberation of Paris
CNN: Paris Liberated
MsNBC: Paris Liberated, and then Paris in Summer.

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