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The Hypermedia Hazard
But the problem isn't only responsibility and ethics, it's technology. There's too much media, and when it's combined with a dreadful and scientifically complex story, and rapid-fire, immediate and ubiquitous information technologies, the results are disturbing, as well as dangerous. Even the most serious media executives seem unwilling to even consider the unthinking and frightening way complex stories like this are transmitted, reported and explained.
A generation ago, most Americans got their news once or twice a day -? from daily papers and evening network newscasts -? no matter what was going on. These were delayed, filtered media. Information could be transmitted, digested and organized before it was presented to the public. No matter how serious the story, you couldn't wallow in it for too long -- evening newscasts only lasted a half hour and there was only so much space in the paper. And reporters and editors had time to consider and check some of the information they passed along. In the Age of Hypermedia, it's commonplace to pass along information immediately and continuously before it can be verified or considered. The public, already frightened, seems to quickly lose track of what is factual and what isn't -- a perfect environment for panic.
But digital and screen technologies, from cable and satellite transmissions to the Net (especially the Web), have created an immediate, unfiltered, 24/7 kind of information delivery system. The mediastream is incessant, even when there is no new information to support it, or little time to make sure it's accurate or coherent. We are told continually, for example, that terrorist cells are dormant and waiting to strike again, and each new anthrax spore seems to have its own cable news hour.
Websites like CNN's bring the news to consumers, giving subscribers e-mail headlines all day long. Like the Net and the Web, cable TV channels are on all the time, every day, desperate and dependent on vivid and disturbing imagery, information, discussion and argument, even when the information isn?t reliable, the discussion not useful or the argument unhelpful. A staggering amount of alarmist information -- innaccurate or best incomplete -- has swamped the country in the past month, yet little is corrected or explained in the continuous rush of reports. This tidal wave of screen and e-information creates a distorted environment, a surreal sense of being surround by an ugly story. This is, literally, hyperreality. Trauma becomes pervasive, and all-encompassing. Normal, routine news and information -- that is, any sense of normalcy -- is drowned out, which adds to the Hypermedia-spawned environment. Even though the vast majority of people are living, working and behaving routinely, the images pouring out of screens suggests just the opposite.
Hypermedia have thus become a civic nightmare. They helped create the hysterical atmosphere surrounding the death of Princess Diana; they helped elevate a sordid presidential scandal ?- the Monica Lewinsky affair -? into a national political crisis.
And now, since the much more serious and legitimately newsworthy attacks on the World Trade Center, and especially following the anthrax mailings around the country, Hypermedia are generating waves of misinformation, confusion and panic. Politicians, reporters and bureaucrats rush in front of TV cameras before they know the facts or have considered how to present them. Images of death, destruction, and hazmat response teams are triggering waves of anxiety and depression. Even though only a handful of Americans have actually contracted anthrax, and it is treatable with available antibiotics, the House of Representatives fled the Capitol last week. People all over the country are flooding emergency rooms for nose swab tests and calling 911 when the see artificial sweetener on a coffee counter or flour residue on a pizza crust. Meanwhile, lobbyists, politicians and professional ideologues crowd the cable channels to take advantage of all that airtime, squabbling over everything from military strategy to airport security. National unity is not sustainable in an environment shaped byh Hypermedia. Whether there is any real news or not, you can turn on MSNBC or Fox or CNN any time of any day and get some saturation coverage. Hypermedia spreads rumors, prompts action where none is required, panic and anxiety where none is necessary.
Meanwhile, as with Desert Storm, the military conflict has been morphed into a techno-war, covered mostly in terms of exotic new weapons systems, analyzed by the generals and military analysts who created them. The corporatized networks no longer pay for enough foreign correspondents to cover conflicts; they prefer to rent military retirees who can talk about AC-130 Spectre gunships and their firepower.
Learning to cope with Hypermedia is an essential survival skill in difficult times. People are learning not to believe much of what they see, read or hear, even when it comes from the Speaker of the House of Representatives (who rushed to microphones Thursday to report -- falsely -- that anthrax spores were making their way through the Capitol ventilation system) and to take their media in small, managed regimens. You might try watching the news for 15 minutes in the morning, then again for 15 minutes at night. You'll be amazed at how little happens in between, and how much of it can wait.
It's no accident that anthrax is being mailed to media organizations. Hypermedia has become the dream tool of terrorists everywhere, sowing precisely the same sort of overblown rhetoric ("things will never be the same in this country again"), and fear that prompted the blowhards who run Congress to shut most of the Capitol down last week, even though the health threat to them and their staffs was both minimal and treatable. Sparked in part by a panicky media, Congressional leaders missed the chance to demonstrate that we aren't in terrible danger. Instead, they embraced the terrorist message that we are falling apart.
In a curious way, this is an old story for America's bizarre relationship with technology. Nobody makes more of it than we do, or is less prepared to deal with its consequences, from airline safety to hypermedia to biological terrorism. Sometimes it seems our ignorance about how technology really works -- and what its consequences really are -- will ultimately do more damage than terrorists can.
It's similar to the problem in advertising. Too much information; it's difficult for people to filter out the good from bad.
Also, when a big story strikes, the coverage is basically the same stuff rehashed every 30 minutes. Most of the time, things don't happen quickly enough to warrant it. The events of the morning of 9/11 did happen quickly enough to warrant it, but what about the constant coverage that lasted for several days?
I've gotten to the point where I no longer want to watch the news. I'll watch the Yankees in the World Series instead.
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
Ya know, I actually have to agree with him a bit on this one. I was speaking to some of our Haz-Mat crews (I also work for Fire/Rescue) and ours, the city's, and the next county over's Haz-Mat units have been running non-stop with Anthrax and other scares. But do we tell the media? We can't. It would only increase the load that we already have.
I agree that information has to get out there, and it seems as if most of the calls we get are people who are playing pranks more than anything else. Lots of people are exposed to Anthrax every day - it is a naturally occuring spore. And it is highly responsive to treatment when caught early. Take something like smallpox - that has potential to be dangerous. Something that hasn't been seen for years, we don't have enough vaccine for, AND is contagious? But again, it is treatable when caught early.
There is a fine line between reporting the news, keeping the citizens informed, and reporting to the point that you push people to the limit where copycats start happening and fear is rampent. I don't have a TV, so I don't know how well the TV media have done with the story, but all of the 'net coverage I have seen has been pretty responsible.
So should we run in fear because the media says it is so? Or perhaps we should merely take that as an opportunity to do more research and find out just how much danger you are really in. Remember, the media are humans too, and prone to make mistakes. Make sure that what they are reporting truly affects you before you go out an by Bio suits and build your bunkers.
Random Musings
The news you get is already filtered and colored by nationality, religion, or political interests. How easy can it be to truly filter it on your own? Neither of us has seen the news ourselves, and many of the news agencies rely on other news agencies in turn. The problem used to be that you never got to hear about it (1939-1945...), now it's that you don't know if you can trust the news. What is the most terrifying?
The americans I've met in person hasn't been ignorant, but then again, I don't like to be around morons. I've met plenty of complete morons in Sweden as of yet. You can't save yourself from them, because let's face it, most people are morons (and before you flaimbait me as well, do you consider yourself a moron or do you agree with me;)).
I live in a small city in Canada, and every single news article to which I've had insider information has been totally botched to the point of being unrecognizable. Out of dozens of verbatim quotes, I've never seen one that someone never said "that's not what I actually said". I've more faith in the regularity of earthquakes than I do in the validity of the media.
Not to sound like a specialist luddite or paranoid conspirator theorist, but I think the news media is only a pawn of corporate media and corporate media a pawn of political and corporate interests.
Slashdot excluded.
Then you should also read this!
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The morning of the 11th, I was a bit late to work in my Fairfax VA office (about 12 miles from downtown DC, less than 10 from Dulles airport), arriving just about the time the Pentagon was hit. Needless to say, we were pretty worried. The question on all our lips was, "Are we at war?", and nobody knew. All 'Net outlets were swamped; all our cell phones were useless as the networks clogged; the only way to get any information at all was to go down to my car and turn on the radio. And at that point, the following things were "known" to be true:
- The Mall was on fire.
- The White House had been attacked.
- A bomb had blown up in the USA Today headquarters (which faces the Potomac, just up from the mall).
- Another hijacked plane was circling Dulles airport, practically over our heads.
- A car bomb had blown up outside the State department.
Needless to say, *none* of these stories turned out to be true - but it took hours to discover that, as all media outlets were reporting rumor as fact. Even the next day, the Washington Post was *still* reporting the State department rumor, even though anyone driving through downtown could clearly see that it was false.
You'd think that it would just have been the hurried rush of events, and that surely in the month since then, calm and reason would have returned to reporting. But if anything, some outlets seem to have become even more sensationalist. Many times the headlines look like something out of the New York Post. Granted these are extraordinary times; but that just calls for extraordinary measures, to make sure that facts are facts and the public isn't needlessly panicked. The past month has been a real eye-opener for me in terms of my ability to trust what the American media says.
On a separate note, describing this phenomenon in a hysterical meta-story, and creating a titled meme ("hypermedia") to describe it, are some of the same tactics that cause the problem in the first place.
And finally, the term "hypermedia" is already taken. Perhaps "hysterimedia" would work for you, if you have to have a meme to rally around instead of just calmly reporting facts.
I found it irritating on cnn.com that you might find this list of headlines:
3 cases of Anthrax in Florida
CDC reports that 5 media cases isolated.
22 testing in DC, 4 positive in early results.
Second man dies of Anthrax.
Two reported dead due to Anthrax.
The point is, you never really get a clear picture of how many cases there are, where they are, etc. You might think that there were way more cases and deaths because they keep getting rereported, and its not clear if they are totals or new cases.
A map with all of the cases and a color code for death, infection, exposure would be nice.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.
While I think that hypermedia is an issue, I don't think it was necessary to pontificate THAT much on it.
People have to learn to be smart about what they read in the popular news media, and to speak up when they are spouting a line of BS. I am also offended by the sanitation of the past that occured in Mr. Katz's commentary. Sure, people only got news once or twice a day. It does NOT mean that coverage was good, well thought out or even accurate. There were media barons back then, just as there are now. For some reason we seem to think that the media barons were defeated.
Guess what, they were not. They just learned to keep a lower profile. Yellow journalism and outright lies were the order of the day 100 years ago. We went through "self-correcting" phase after that, and journalism got better. News reporting got better. We will self-correct again, now that some news is not as good.
One of the things to remember is that while errors occur in our hyper-fast news, corrections appear just as fast.
People need to use there heads. Question authority, and question what you are told. Have a skeptical eye. A healty dose of skepticism makes the world a better place.
Its the blind believers that cause panics. Its people who do not even begin to TRY to find out what is going on. Its ignorant commentary and a reliance on "common sense" that cannot be sensible due to lack real information. The only thing true about "common sense" when it comes to news is that it is is COMMON. Meaning that every ill-informed, ignorant fool who has seen a 5 minute video clip has an expert opinion.
If people do not educate themselves about issues that they care about, they will be decieved and deceive themselves about what news organizations present.
Take for example the E-mail that has been going around about former President Clinton and his promises to "get the terroists and make them pay" and the "common sense" failure to do so.
While I am not a big Clinton supporter, do you REALLY think that there was enough outrage in the public or in Congress to justify an invasion of another country over a couple of embassy attacks and the attack on the USS Cole, all spaced out over eight years?
Guess what, there wasn't. We all went about our merry little lives, and so did Congress. Had Clinton gone to war, he would have been decried as doing it for political reasons. He couldn't do it, so he didn't.
But yet we get ignorant, uninformed, badly thought-out email about it. For God's sake Paul Harvey even read the thing on the air. Common sense says that email is right. Examine your own attitudes about military action AT THAT TIME. Now is it REALLY right? Try to see through the fog of patriotism.
Be skeptical! Don't believe everything you read or hear. Look it up! Study it! And don't offer an opinion on something until you understand both sides of the issue.
Gedvondur
There is something surreal about watching Katz rant hysterically and ignorantly about the major news media spreading hysteria and misinformation... True, this is about par for Jon Katz, but the synchronicity of comment and commentator is ironic, or perhaps inevitable.
Someone please send Katz on a tour of the historical archives of any library or newspaper. Read the newspapers of the 18th or 19th century; you'll see the same hysteria and rumors-as-news whenever war or disaster struck. Rumors have always spread faster than accurate news; this is nothing new.
As for the overload of cable/internet/nightly news: turn the damn things off if it bothers you! If hearing that the postman in Podunk, Nebraska is being tested for anthrax every half-hour is causing you panic everytime one of your fellow office slobs spills the dairy creamer in the coffee room, stop listening to it! You don't actually need to know the news every hour, on the hour unless there's a tornado or hurricane bearing down on you. I'd rather watch Dragonball Z than Peter Jennings any day.
As for all the stuff about our neat high-tech war machines, one might note that the Pentagon is not releasing a whole lot of information about the actual combat in Afghanistan for obvious reasons. (I'm sure certain people in the Pentagon remember when CNN and other news reports were happily broadcasting to all and sundry real-time reports of troop actions). In the absence of real information about the war, the newsies resort to interviewing talking heads and showing pictures of neat hardware--they have to show *something*, after all. I do not doubt that the Pentagon encourages the news networks to show off our high-tech stuff--it's a form of propaganda, a show of power meant to intimidate our enemies, encourage our allies and hearten our own citizens.
Doesn't anyone remember the Gulf War, where talking heads were the order of the day when there was no combat news forthcoming? It got to the point where the reporters were interviewing each other about reporting the war!
---dragoness