Description, explanation, analysisFollow

Okay, so I was reading about the guy who produces "The Wire" saying that everyone had missed the Big Point of the last season, which is that in the awards chasing and the internal angst and the infighting and all, the paper missed every single big story.

A couple of critics fired back and said things like "We didn't mention it because it was really, really obvious, so good job on that, I guess, now shut up."

This morning Jon Carroll wrote about a play in which news moguls and reporters are faced with reporting the (possibly) imminent (possible) death of all mankind, and to explain it. The column is really about the role of the media: is it to explain? to analyze? or just to describe events?

Further along he mentions that on September 11, 2001 he and basically everyone else in presumably all news outlets in the country were directed to write about the events of the day, and to explain them. Now, there's either no explanation or it's really, really obvious what happened and why it happened. So what's the role of the media?

Incidentally the first commenter mentioned Carroll's column of 9/12/2001, which he concluded with the following:



But I don't believe the role of the media is to predict, necessarily.

In an Ideal world the Media should report facts without bias giving a balanced comment on issues, this would be Discribe, explain and analyze.

However what modern media really does is manipulate. All reporting is driven by an agenda most of the time it's the agenda of the people who own the station and rarely are facts reported without a huge political slant.

The media manipulates what music is popular, what clothes are worn, what we eat, what is considered social norms and much more.

of course most people on this forum are bright enough not to be manipulated but you only have to look at the people at your repective place of work to see the sheep.

there was an programme on the BBC not long back that examined the influence the media has on the public and it was shown that they could raise the sales of a particular product 100% by employing methiods used by news stations to influence peoples choices.

There are countless examples of the media whipping the pulic into a frenzy over healthscares that when examined logically are not scary at all.

Look at the treatment of Ms Spears, it's a classic case of "build em up and knock em down."

What I really want to know is when we, citizens of Old Europe, can expect to be able to purchase Season 5 of the Wire? Cos I finished Season 4, and while it was very good, it really felt like a pre-season-5 kinda season, if you know what I mean.

I don't totally buy the "media creation" line. When news organizations are writing about Spears or Hilton, it's because there's enough people already interested in Spears, Hilton, Pitt-Jolie, etc to sell the news story. Sure, the "media" made them stars but the "media" is everything from MTV to C-Span to People magazine to The Economist to the Inquirer to the Wall Street Journal.

I'm not sold on the "perfect world" in which the broadsheets only report sterile facts either*. Part of why people read the papers or watch the news is for some analysis and explanation. Readers (I'm just going to use that to mean anyone partaking of the media) rely on the fact that the folks writing the stories are better informed about US history in the Middle East or the state of relations between China and Taiwan or where in the hell Suriname even is than they, the readers, are. They feel more fulfilled and better informed to read a story explaining in some depth why Chechnyan rebels took a school hostage than to simply read that the rebels are there or even what they want.

On the topic of bias, it's a joint responsibility. I do believe that the media has an obligation to avoid pushing an agenda via their news stories (and should try to present a balanced editorial page). Likewise, people who desire to be informed have an obligation to seek out multiple sources. It's trivially easy these days to read news sources from across the nation and the world.

*Tarv didn't say this but I've heard it from other idealistic souls