Nicole’s got a library blog (again)

I’m looking back on just about the past week and thinking of several meaningful conversations that took place about, more or less, the topic of democracy. Over our Thursday night pre-quizo dinner the topic traveled from enviromentalism (which is brought upon by talking about Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth), to science in the media. I was recalling a lecture in a class during my undergrad where we talked about several potential trends in the portrayal of science in the media:

• Science was once covered in significant sections of some major national newspapers. In whole sections and of a higher quality. Meaning the coverage was not just about pop-science and food science, but was broader in depth and breadth.

I wouldn’t know how true this is because I haven’t seen (well, also haven’t looked) for any studies supporting this. But I have personally noticed the lack of good science in the newspapers. Another point:

• The public image of science and scientists is tarnished. This begins with scientists on television and film being portrayed as these individuals with intelligence and quirks far beyond that of everyday people. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ idea makes scientific knoweldge seem so unaccessible that most folks would rather just leave it to science to understand.

Personally, looking at the way that librarians are thought of in public opinion – we can clearly see this. We’re seen as tightly wound, strict, quiet maintainers of quiet who work in the dustiest and quiestest (can I say quiest again?) places. People don’t even understand what it is that we do. I have close friends who still think that I scan books for checkout! Right! My point being that the image of scientists and professionals that work in these fields needs to change so that people aren’t so put off by it.

In my opinion certain conversations that are huge in the public discourse could be a bit more fruitful if everyone had stronger science backgrounds or not even that a greater interest in science and science education. The conversation on stem-cell research might not have to be led by the moral police – maybe people would be able to allow for a more open attitude if they already understood science more. The same goes for the important and vital issue of the environment.

I’ve gotten a little bit sidetracked, but we were having a conversation that ended with mutual agreement that something about public opinion and the media. Plenty of evidence is accessible to support the fact that the media is out of the public’s hands and is in no way a reflection of events or opinion. No system and obviously no objectivity exist in so much as to allow the reader confidence in the media that he or she is consuming. By that I mean that the proccesses that we assume facilitate a democratic media are indeed nonexistent and in their fragile existence nothing but flawed and troublesome.

So I mentioned how I think that Web 2.0 technology is brilliantly promising in its potential to communicate ideas and make that communication accessible with greater ease than the owned-media.  I sort of take it back, or reconsider it after looking at Tom Stites guest posting/address entitled “Is Media Performance Democracy’s Issue? ” over at Citemedia.org. Stites asks if the web movement, web authoring and publishing doesn’t also take away from a larger and more relevent issue involving mass-market journalism?

I thought to myself, of course not! (dummy). I use an aggregator and read a ton of blogs everyday, I read several newspapers and listen to NPR about three times a day and podcast my favorite programs that I miss while at work. I switch between favorite columnists in the weeklies that I read and which ones I go to first on a regular basis. I feel like I am engaged in the media that I consume since I get it from multiple sources, Anyhow, how silly am I? I’m a well-educated, somewhat gainfully employed twenty-something in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. This is certainly not a reason for high and mightiness, and Im not making it out to be that way. Its just facts are facts and that is who I am. Tom Stites points out:

“But while the Web is highly democratic within the slice of the population that uses it intensively, so far this slice is small and elite.”

A nice way of reminding me (well, us) that we’re a slice of a bigger picture. Ton Stites goes on to address his concern for the rest of America. The wage-earners, the paycheck to paycheck folks who comprise our great nation. You know, real hardworking American citizens. If we put the digital divide aside and look back to traditional news media: these folks are not represented and not being given the type of media that they need, deserve and possible expect.

To fawn for a moment, what Tom Stites states in this speech/address/whatever, inspires me so much. He goes on to say that people who have no reliable information about issues that are important to their everyday lives will turn to and trust propaganistic media opinion to guide them through these issues. This produces:

• people supporting policies and ideas that they do not fully comprehend
• peopele electing leaders who do not represent their economic interests.

His message is clear:

Why is it that less than affluent Americans are being zoned out of serious reporting?

“what we’re talking about here is a class divide – two classes of citizens, one that’s well served with quality reporting and one that’s left to the vagaries of the manipulators. Given our country’s cherished values, this is a disgrace. And it is a terrible threat to democracy, which we all know can’t function without a well-informed citizenry.”

So now we’re getting into intense potentially upsetting waters where people start to throw around that “L” word (you know, its a synonym for The Left…) and no one pays attention to the message at all. Because that too, to me, is a huge problem. Stites goes on to discuss the type of advertising appearing in the papers and the probelmatic implications of it on bringing the news to the rest of America.

Advertisers such as Lord and Taylor, expensive car dealers and wine retailers constitute the regualar reliable advertisers in newspapers. Their clients aren’t the regular folks, their customers are the more affluent folks. As Stites sheds incite to, newspaper staff consider other advertising to be “waste”. The newspapers write to the affluent readers with everyone else in the country simply being present in unflattering ways in stories. It is no wonder that less than affluent citizens have abandoned newspapers. The trends supporting this adbandonment are not in the advertising alone: stories that are not locally relevent, provide too much abstraction and statistics also contribute no doubt.

You have toread the way that Tom Stiles leads the audience through an exercize in the shoes of a hard working single mother as she would see the way that the Boston Globe covers stories. Its fantastic and I can’t paraphrase it here. Stites talks afterwards about how the image of the single mother isn’t distant for him since it was based on his experience growing up. His mother subscribed to the newspaper back then and read it everyday. So too does my mother, one of the hardest working women that I have ever met. Every four days she works four days of twelve hour shifts and everyday she comes home at night and reads The Scranton Times. I do think that the Times is relevent to my mother’s needs. But then again my mother isn’t really representative of that destitute situation at all. She may watch her money here and there but it is so that she can enjoy that items that the pages talk about like nice dinners, concerts and travel. So nevermind. I just wanted to give a shout out to my Mom.

Stites really does raise the question: why can’t these papers reflect regular people’s interests. Perhaps Stites closing thoughts are the most inspiring:

“So my plea to all of us, myself included, is that we keep America’s discarded readers in mind as we work to strengthen journalism and shore up our withering democracy. We need to remember that they’re citizens, too, and to take care to make sure they have easy access to quality journalism that squarely addresses the issues that affect their lives. “