It may be how we can humanize a story such as Muntazar and his family who gave up everything to come to America - in watching and listening to him, we can find a glimpse of what this may be like if we had to leave home for America
It is how we can put a human face on why people risk everything to come here from Mexico - why might you risk your life and separation from your family?
How are we doing? I know we are making progress but we are not all the way there yet. If you care about having a better media - a media that can take us away from name calling and help us find a path to resolution - please drop by and offer us YOUR advice.
People are getting tired of how the media polarizes society.
One of our goals here on Homeland is to discover how best to offer you a space where you and others can feel safe enough to have a real conversation about Immigration. It is such an emotional issue that in most other media, all we see is argument based on fixed emotional positions and that is on a good day. Often all we see is people yelling at each other.
Is there a better way? Is there a way that media can help us all see through our emotions and find a pathway to solutions that help?
We certainly hope so and this site and our work here is our first step in this voyage of discovery. But do we know how to do this? We have some good ideas. I think that we have made a good start. But you know too, that trying to change your own self is the hardest thing of all.
So we have reached out to three of the best thinkers on how media works. We asked them in the context of this project on Immigration
Why is the media not helping us know more about our issues and know more about how to solve them?
What would be a better way?
What advice do they have for us at KETC?
In this post I will introduce you to them and give you some context for their advice. I will follow up with 3 posts that each contain each person’s full answers.
Euan Semplestarted life in the BBC World Service. He was instrumental in awakening the BBC to the potential of the web and to how social media works. Part of his own learning in that work was how to use influence rather than power for he was not the CEO but a quite junior person. Since leaving the BBC, Euan has become one of the “Go To” people that large organizations seek out. These kinds of organizations, such as the World Bank, Nato and Nokia, often have the greatest challenge in changing their culture to use social media well. Euan understands this aspect of the challenge so well.
Here is a short blog post from Euan that I think will give you a sense of the person he is: “Many moons ago, in the early days of blogging David Weinberger described it as “writing ourselves into existence”. I was reminded recently of just how transformative blogging has been in my life. How much more aware I am of my thoughts and feelings – and of the world around me. Once you have a blog you notice more, you start to think “I might write about this on my blog” “What do I want to say?” “What will people’s reaction be?”. Over time you get better at noticing and the better at noticing you get the more noticed you get! You end up in the wonderful collective web of “Oooh that’s interesting” which I now wouldn’t ever want to be without.”
Euan will bring the human and cultural aspects to the fore in his interview: starting with the great challenge for all organizations that “Conversations can only take place between individuals”
Doc Searls day job is Senior Editor of The Linux Journal, he is also a Fellow of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is a long standing fan and technical insider of public broadcasting. But for many of us who are interested in how social media might improve our lives, he is one of the 4 authors of arguably the most influential book on that all of this means – The Cluetrain Manifesto.
Here is how the Cluetrain Manifesto opens and this quote provides a context for Doc’s answers in the interview. “A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked. Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”
As we started to talk he added this key point – that when he says “Market” he does not mean marketing, segments etc but the old fashioned “Place” where people came together and using their name and real identity negotiated important things between each other. A place that was safe and where your name, your personal reputation, was your most important asset. Where trust was created by personal honor. This is his starting point for where we go.
Jay Rosen is a Professor of Journalism at the NYU Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute. He is the author of one of the most read blogs on Journalism Press Think. At the heart of his work are his insights into the cultural issues at stake when the “One to Many Media” is confronted by the “Many to Many” alternative. Traditionalists who hope that the web and all it stands for would go away, see him as a heretic. Those who seek to find the new path, see him as a beacon of light.
Mr Rosen: “The cost of changing settled routines seems too high, but the cost of not changing is, in the long term, even higher. A good example is the predicament of the newspaper press: the print edition provides most of the revenues, but it cannot provide a future. I know of no evidence to show that young people are picking up the print habit. So if the cost of abandoning print is too high, the cost of sticking with it may be even higher, though slower to reveal itself. That’s a problem.
Another example is the decline of trust. In the mid-1970s over 70% of Americans told Gallup they had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the press. Today: 47%. Clearly, something isn’t working. But revisions to the code of conduct that has led to this decline would be seen by most journalists as increasing the risk of mistrust. I’ve tried to argue that the View from Nowhere—also called objectivity—should be replaced by “here’s where we’re coming from.” That strikes most people in the American press as dangerous and unworkable. But the current course is unsustainable: trust continues to decline, with a big acceleration after 2003. When I mention this to journalists, they say: “Trust in all big institutions has declined, Jay.” Which is true (except for the military). But is that really an answer? You’re supposed to be the watchdogs over dubious actors. Why aren’t you an exception?
I could go on, but I think you see the pattern. Change is too expensive; the status quo is unsustainable.”
In Jay’s interview the issue of Trust – how to get it and how to keep it will be the thread.
I noticed a remarkable moment in this video when JS makes the point that all who worry about what is going in want an end to the gridlock. That demonizing each other is making any progress impossible.
This is picture of Mission Control during Apollo 13. When confronted with this crisis they did 2 important things. They recognized that whatever solution would have to depend on what the guys had up there to hand - no vain imagining new resources. Secondly they knew that the only mission now was to get the men home.
The focus
The method
Imagine then if instead that these men had divided up along idealogical lines. Say engineers versus astronauts. Imagine if they had fought tooth and nail about who was to blame for the accident?
Crazy?
So think a bit about the media, our political system and us?
NPR showed us that how you connect to content is key to audience growth - so far they and I have focused on the the connection as being web and social media based.
But there is an even more important "Connection". That is Trust.
Do we trust the source of the content? What is the Social Relationship between the News Source and the Public? What are the Power issues? What is the motivation of the new organization? Whom do they serve and why? All these relational issues affect Trust.
So what is the central connection between the news source and you?
Here is how Craig Newmark thinks that this issue will play out.
HT to John Bracken for the clip.
At KETC we have made this issue of the relationship with our members and the wider public in St Louis our central concern.
We keep asking ourselves the question of how can a local public TV station establish the Trust that we need to become vital to our community? While this is our own question - it is also the broder question that will affect all news sources.
We agree with Mr Newmark that we have a start based on our non-commercial model. But what do we have to do to make this more real?
No station on their own is smart enough to come up with the answers. For this demands a revolution in mindset.
Fortunately for us, 3 Wise Men turned up with gifts. Gifts of wisdom about this issue of Trust and Relationship. They showed up because they care deeply that the answers are found.
America has always been a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, there have been times where immigration has been perceived as a national threat to our way of life—we live today in one of those times.
The purpose of Homeland initiative is to help people define how we as a country and a community should best deal with immigration. We will explore the complexity of immigration issues faced by our society. The goals of Homeland:
Create a safe place for America to talk about one of the most sensitive issues facing our country in the 21st century
Connect people to the issues, resources and each other
Give people a voice to confront the question, “are we as a country still a beacon to immigrants?”
The issues faced in Missouri are a microcosm of the larger national debate raging on immigration. We’re exploring the issues that make up the complicated national narrative of immigration through a collaborative process that will live in a multi-platform environment designed to engage participation and action:
Local and statewide facilitated conversations with community members
Guided citizen media creation
Purpose-driven, original digital media creationa national, prime-time, four-hour television series
A robust online space for people to participate and connect to issues and to each other.
The bulk of our engagement will occur in 2010 with broadcast series delivery in mid-2011.
Why Immigration?
There is no savior coming on a white horse with all of the answers to our nation’s immigration woes. Immigration remains a dominantly divisive issue in America and the issues faced in Missouri are a microcosm of the larger national debate on immigration. Confusion, fear, and uncertainty have reduced the issue of immigration to meaningless and repetitive sound bites hindering our ability to engage with the issues and find thoughtful positions and actions in keeping with our national identity and beliefs.
Why immigration? By 2050, the Census Bureau predicts, the United States will have a new minority: whites. Already, non-Hispanic whites are the minority in California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii, and about one in 10 U.S. counties. Missouri currently has no county like that — but that’s likely to change in the next decade and the results of the 2010 Census may paint a different picture of who makes up American communities.
The Homeland initiative is really about the community and that’s where this idea started. It started with dialogue with people across our community—attending countless meetings where people were looking for answers on the future of our region. What we heard countless times was that in order for our region to prosper and thrive, we need population growth and in order to achieve population growth—we must embrace immigration.
The term immigration is innocuous enough—or so we thought. What we we’re learning from talking to lots of people in our community is this: When you talk about immigration, most people are really talking about illegal immigration. “Legal immigration—that’s fine. People who come here illegally—that’s not okay,” is what we’ve heard countless times as we’ve talked with over one thousand people across our community.
What we’ve learned is—it’s complicated. Immigration is a complex web of chicken and egg issues and we alone don’t have the answers. Most media paint a dichotomy of solutions—it’s black or white, this or that, one side or the other. There is no in between—you must choose a side or you don’t fit. All the important issues faced by communities across the country are complicated. But what if we connected lots of people with each other? What if people in our community found a way to reduce the complexity around the issues of immigration? What if they had more and better information to help them decide what’s right for them and for where they live? What if you didn’t have to choose a side? Could this work on immigration help communities take on other complicated issues—issues that are stuck because of polarization? This is what public media can do better than anyone and this is why we’re taking on this work.
Here is a summary of what KETC - my client - is trying to do. I speak for myself here.
The challenges that America and most of the world face are complex and dangerous. If we cannot find a path, they have the power to weaken or even destroy us. But the way that the media works today that feeds into our political system makes it impossible to act responsibly.
Our current media system reduces everything to a binary shouting match - I'm right and you are not only wrong but evil! The result ever great polarization and gridlock. The result, we watch "Political Theatre" as millions face a future with no jobs - while the clock ticks on Peak Oil - while our education system and our infrastructure crumbles.
The impressive civic discourse and can do aspect of American life that de Tocqueville so admired has been replaced by arguments about dogma similar to the early Christian debates about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin.
As Markets do indeed shift to being Conversations - Politics and Media have become Gladiator Shows.
My wonderful client - KETC - has been on 4 year journey of discovery to find out if a local public TV station could find out how to bring back that great American tradition - the "Safe Town Hall" where citizens could be heard and get connected to solve the problems that faced them. Where the intention is to find a way of working with each other to do what is best for our community.
Are you tired of all the bullshit? Do you long for a place where good people can commit to each other to help make where they live a better place?
If you do then please have a look at what we are doing - we are at the baby steps now - and need your advice and support.
For what we are doing is so old that we have all but forgotten how to do this - but we have the wonder that is the web on our side. We are just a bunch of regular folk who are struggling up the Missouri River as Lewis and Clark did. We have an aim as you can see that is clear - we know some things but like all voyages of discovery - we cannot know that is around the next river bend or over the next range of mountains.
Like Lewis and Clark - we need the advice and the help of the natives along the way - for without this they and we could never complete the journey.
By helping us - you help yourselves and your children. For if we can find a way to create the environment for a discourse in a topic that is as messy as immigration, then we can do this for all the issues that currently confound us.
The real new media 2.0 are not the tools. The new politics 2.0 is not your senator on Facebook. America 2.0 is a nation that has got its mojo back - a nation of people from many places that can get together and work out how to get through the great challenges that confront us in the 21st century
(The determination to be “fair” to all sides on all stories can at times go to such absurd lengths that Allan Little, one of our best reporters with hard experience of covering Sarajevo in the mid-90s and much more, speaks of the analogy of two men at a bar, one saying that two plus two equals four, and the other that two plus two equals six. The BBC solution to this disagreement? Put them both on the Today Programme, and the answer clearly lies somewhere in the middle.)
My former colleagues at the BBC, including Richard Black and others whom I know as good men and women all, remain trapped like most Western-style journalists in the old paradigm of news as event, not process, always needing to be shiny, new and different.
As a correspondent, and later at every nine o’clock morning editorial meeting at the World Service on every weekday through the 1990s, I and my colleagues would grapple with this – how to tell a complex story in just a few lines, with enough of a news peg to interest our listeners. And listeners, viewers and readers have short attention spans – they’ll tune out if they sense it’s just the same old stuff.
So, in order to sell and appeal, whether public service or commercial, journalism needs events. We need clear causes, agents and forces to be visibly responsible. We need (not that we put it like this) a narrative of baddies and goodies. Where the climate is concerned, things are slow-moving, complex, and what’s more, we ourselves are the baddies. That’s not something listeners and viewers want or wanted to be told.
HT Jay Rosen - Isn't this the heart of the matter? Are not most of the tough issues that confront us complex and slow moving and they involve not "them" but "US"!
I think that the media has failed us all and has a major responsibility for the mess that we are in. We are stalled on energy, food, security, immigration, education and the economy. Why? Because our media uses a process that ensures that we are stalled.
Do I know a better way? I know a better direction which is why I am working with KETC on Immigration - one of the issues where only emotion and externalization rules and where the press pour gas on the fears of the people and so feed a political system that is only theatre.
The operating system for mainstream journalism knows what to do when there’s a legitimate debate to be had. But when there’s an illegitimate debate going on (and getting louder) that same system tends to break down, especially when the culture war and partisan divide are confounded with the issue, as they are here.
A New York Times, Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC or CNN reporter receives from his professional peers and traditions no clear instructions for how to handle an illegitimate debate, meaning one that should never have arisen, because it is based on phony selection, manufactured doubt, and highly ideological reads of the available evidence. The louder the din, the more wary the mainstream journalist is of “choosing sides.” But what if choosing sides is exactly what the journalist would have to do to portray things as they really are?
This leads to a third factor. Let me repeat my question: what if choosing sides is exactly what the fair-minded journalist would have to do to portray things as they really are? Here, I’m afraid, self-image conflicts with reality. That’s painful. People flee pain. The reality is it is very, very hard for a mainstream news person to say, “These people have the facts on their side, these people are manufacturing doubt and manipulating the case, and everyone should realize this is a phony debate– okay, is that clear?” This almost never happens. But in the mind of our hypothetical reporter, portraying things as they really are–that, is, truth-telling–always and everywhere trumps all other factors. The very bedrock of their self-image is “let the chips fall where they may, we tell it like it is.” Giving that up would be like saying to the self, “my career has been a waste.” Or: “I am a fraud.”
And so it is very likely that the enormous institutional pressures against declaring,
What more can I say - As I struggle with my colleagues at KETC to find a path through the noise that surrounds Immigration - I keep wondering what the balance point is for truth?
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