Journalism is not simply reporting. It is what you begin your day hearing or looking at, and it is what you see as you close the page of a newspaper or turn off the news channel for the night. I believe journalism is more than news though, because I believe that news can be so microscopic and meaningless, but still be passionate. As consumers of a first world country, passion drives our economy.
Without passion, there is no meaning to anything. There would be no purpose to picking up a magazine if the publisher decided to invest 2 minutes of a 1400 minute day to writing an article about something. It would most likely be a story that would be comparable to one that was written by a kindergartner. Maybe there could be one argument in it, but it would probably be a mess of a story. When we do things so mechanically (without any investment) and without thought, there is not any emotion.
Emotion is extremely meaningful in publications, we see it in the news almost everyday. It is evident that emotion is used in publications because it is used in commercials, public apologies, and through storytelling. As journalists, we write in a way that will have an impact on another person or a group of people. We share details that will make our audience feel. Whether they feel awful after learning about it or they feel compelled, this feeling is so important to maintaining a supporter.
The commercial above was published by the ASPCA, its use of music and pictures are used to draw attention to the company and to make you feel bad about what is happening in the world while you are sitting on your couch snuggling your dog and not doing anything to help other animals. It uses pictures of beaten animals that you stop to think "what if that were my pet?"
UNICEF does a very similar thing to what the ASPCA does in this informative video. It uses general knowledge to show you how high our quality of life is compared to the other 14% of the world who does not know when their next meal will be. It displays pictures that are so focused on how terribly these people live. Almost every picture shown in the video is of a child crying, yet it uses such simple phrases to tell the general public what is happening across the world.
People need find a passion for something and to run with it. The creators of these videos that bring tears to our eyes, have a passion for what they do. Because they are so passionate about their ideals, they are so convincing. They are well educated on what they want the public to know have found a way to bring their opinions to the public eye in a very dramatic way. I believe that this dramatic appearance is what is what journalism is. Whether we show this through storytelling, an article, a picture, or a video, journalism uses emotion to be informative.
Your blog does a good job of showing how difficult it is to do fair reporting in a world that responds to emotional appeals so much more than facts.It's increasingly difficult to balance good reporting when people want emotions. Sometimes a good story is also emotional appealing, but it's not always the case. How do we get facts to people who may not pay attention to them? It's a terribly difficult job.
ReplyDeleteIt shows how companies can control their own message more than ever and leapfrog over journalists. They can make their own "news" and use the same channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc) to get the news out to people. To me, that's dangerous, because they can get articles that haven't been fact-checked out to people. It makes Journalism even more important to me.
I totally agree with you when you say that passion is needed for something to have any meaning, and meaning is extremely important in deciding a good story from a great one. You show how journalism can be manipulated to grab the audiences attention with the two commercials you included. I like how you used them to prove your point. Great job. I really like the idea you chose for this blog. Keep it up!
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