Friday, February 25, 2011

TV Shows and Politics

In this course, we often talk about how the media- journalism, radio and TV news - affect politics and politicians. However, what about TV Shows, that is, fictional stories. Do these affect politics? When Obama was elected, I had this sneaking suspicion (and I'm sure I'm not that only one) that the show '24,' had something to do with it. For it's first 3(?) seasons, '24' featured a black president (who, by the way, would make a great president in the real world). How much do you think shows like '24' and 'The West Wing' affect the people who watch them? Do you think it alters their opinions on social and governmental issues? How much do you think it affects their views on real-life politics?

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The King's Speech: A Personal Struggle Publicized By Media

I recently saw the film "The King's Speech," which is an excellent movie that I highly recommend if you have not seen it. The premise of the film is that the younger son of the King George V of England has a stutter. After the King falls ill and dies, the throne eventually falls upon his son "Bertie." Bertie as King George VI has to make numerous speeches in person and on the radio and because of his stutter, this task scares, embarrasses, and frustrates him tremendously.

Although there is a lot to discuss about this movie, one point I'd like to focus on is the message of the media interfering with the personal lives of politicians. Before radio existed and became popular, the King would have had to speak to his people, but most people would not be hearing him in person, thus a secret of stuttering would be a lot less known to the population. At the time that the movie is set in, the King would address the nation at least every Christmas on the radio, and thus the King could not escape his fate of everyone knowing his weakness.

I think this example is the early stage of the phenomenon of media exposing personal struggles and relationships of people in political power. How often do we hear about a mayor, or governor, or congressman's rendezvous with another woman? Instead of focusing on the issues of the time, all we heard about Sarah Palin was about her daughter's pregnancy and her home life! Yes, some of these events do have significance to us, but many times they just expose something personal about a political figure and it does not affect their political views or capability to lead a city, state, or country.

The media does this because it sells. People like gossip. According to Jewish law, these types of stories would no doubt be considered Loshon Hara and Motzei Shem Ra. Perhaps I am tinted by my halachic perspective, but shouldn't there be a standard to leave people alone with their personal struggles and not publicize them to the world?

Friday, February 18, 2011

Sensitivity to Privacy or Important News Coverup?

A CBS News correspondent, Lara Logan, was sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square this week, after she was separated from the rest of the CBS crew amongst the mob scene. CBS, however did not report this story.

An article published by the Boston Herald, bemoans CBS's "sitting on the story." The author accuses the news station of trying to cover up an important news story, and critiques CBS for only addressing the situation once other news companies reported the story. The article also brings up an important point about the privacy of a rape victim, which is of particular interest to me because I am a trained advocate/counselor for sexual assault survivors. Maybe CBS did not report the story out of a sensitivity to Logan; it is traumatizing and embarrassing to be raped. And what could be worse than the whole world knowing about this? On the other hand, rape is a heinous crime, and the fact that this woman was raped in the middle of Tahrir Square definitely says something about the people and society if this was tolerable.

This story brings up an important issue in media: how much is too much? What information should be kept private for sensitivity reasons, and what is important enough to surpass that?

The author of the article is of the opinion that this story should have been reported, and I think this is valid. However, I can understand CBS's hesitance to publicize the story. I don't think they did it because they were trying to cover up something bad that occurred to their employee, rather I think they did it out of respect to Logan.

As a final note, the article brings up a cultural/societal issue: that of women being treated as lesser beings. In the U.S., there is constantly movement to equality of the sexes and woman are respected as human beings. However, this ideology is not prevalent amongst the world, and specifically amongst the Muslim population, where women often are punished after being raped. It is sad to think that as much rights and recognition women have gotten in the U.S. over the past 90 years, women in other places are still mistreated.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Could the Media Have Stopped Madoff?

One of the chapters assigned to read this week in Institutions of American Democracy: The Press was an essay entitled "The Watchdog Role," by W. Lance Bennett and William Serrin. The beginning of the chapter speaks about the role of media as a watchdog-that the media should investigate and document the activities of institutions in order to notify the public of these actions that may affect them. The authors note that although journalists do this most of the time, they "often miss early-warning signs of important activities that later blow up as scandals that prove costly to the public."

One scandal that comes to mind and that is being discussed again is that of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. Madoff is now claiming that the banks "had to know" what he was up to, but that they ignored it and pretended not to realize.

For the sake of argument, let's assume Madoff is telling the truth. Is this something that the media should have somehow picked up on before it broke out into a huge scandal, affecting thousands of people and many many organizations? According to Madoff, there were "early-warning signs" that banks must have picked up on. Clearly if this is so, it was on the bank officials to look into the situation and investigate. If we take Madoff's statement as true, we now face many questions. Firstly, we now have to look into these banks and the bank executives who dealt with Madoff's accounts, and question why they did not notice anything for so long. Secondly, if they did notice sketchy business, why did they not look into it more? Thirdly, looking back, were there signs that the media could have picked up on? How could a better watch on Madoff and the banks have prevented the loss of millions of dollars?

Although I agree with Bennett and Serrin's assertion that the media should investigate and dig up facts to prevent crimes and fraud from blowing up into scandals, I don't think we can blame the media for missing early signs of scandal. In the Madoff case, if the banks didn't look into the situation themselves, how could we expect the media to? And even if the banks had scrutinized the situation, did but did not tip off the media, how could journalists have known? It takes a tip from an insider, the leakage of confidential information, for the media to have a breaking story. They need to be notified that something is going on in order for them to start digging up evidence.



As a side note, both Time Magazine and the NY Times had an article on this story. Time magazine says Madoff's son Daniel committed suicide, while NY Times says his name was Mark.

Someone needs to get their facts straight.