Slashdot Mirror
Feature: Technology, Media and Grief
Technology is a growing source of concern in the world because it changes in itself, and because its development generates other kinds of changes, many of them unforeseen.
The cover of the death of John Kennedy Jr. and his wife and sister-in-laws offers a vivid, contemporary look at how technology is affecting - sometimes overwhelming -- modern media.
Powerful and manipulative images - John Kennedy Jr. saluting his dead father's casket, nostalgic accounts of the Lost Camelot, images of weeping relatives, neighbors, friends and strangers, debris floating in water - are being transmitted technologically all over the United States and the world, repeated over and over again for hours, days, even when there is no new information to pass along.
As happened after the death of Diana Spencer, this grief becomes ritualized and globalized. It develops momentum of its own. People thousands of miles away - strangers who couldn't possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the principals in a far-off tragedy like this -are affected as grievously as family and friends.
For Americans these images are overwhelming, inescapable. They distort reality, crowd out other news and information and become so potent that become the locus of the country's civic business, the object of attention from public officials all the way up to the President.
When stories involve tragedies that happen to glamorous people - especially nice and attractive ones - technology transforms them into mythic, almost religious figures - Princess Di, and now, John Kennedy, Jr. They quickly becomes subjects not of journalism but adoration, their homes shrines, shrouded in flowers and testimonials. For different sorts of celebrities, however powerful - the controversial Mother Teresa comes to mind -- attention paid their passing is fleeting.
In recent decades, major stories like this have increasingly become driven by new technologies, especially the new genre of stories one could call Techno-Tragedies: the crash of TWA Flight 800, the OJ Simpson trial, the death of Princess Di, the war in Kosovo.
Thanks to satellite and digital advances, distant stories are no longer related to us by remote correspondents describing things we can't see for ourselves in places we can't go. Increasingly, journalists are referees presenting conflicting points-of-view, or simply narrators of images we are all seeing simultaneously, most frequently on TV, increasingly on the Net.
Techno-tragedies are driven by images rather than judgement, significance, reasoning or content.
Thus they frequently involve either celebrities or war. You will never see round-the-clock coverage on cable of famine in Africa or the declining quality of America's public schools. This kind of fusion coverage is reserved almost exclusively for potent techno-memes - people whose images warrant being fired all over the world at astonishing speed with numbing frequency.
War and tragedies involving the famous are perfect fuel for technologically - driven media. They offer riveting, addictive images. These images can distort reality. War is presented as bloodless and precise.
Nuance is nearly impossible. Diana Spencer, a humanistic celebrity, becomes a Saint. John Kennedy Jr. an affable magazine publisher, becomes the symbol of his generation, his tragedy a generational benchmark. Stories like Kennedy's plane crash are covered beyond all proportion or their natural place in news and history.
The power of technology seems to cause us to lose our moral bearings. There is no middle ground or civilized discourse, hardly any place to go to consider the impact of technology or the images it's bringing us in thoughtful, reasoned ways.
The tragic is confused with the historic. To be famous is to be heroic, to be earnest is to be noble.
"The news that John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Besette are missing at sea and presumed dead has struck such a crippling blow for my generation," wrote Douglas Brinkley, a contributing editor of Kennedy's George Magazine and a history professor at the University of New Orleans, in the New York Times Monday. "?it's hard to escape the pang of disbelief, the empty feeling that a magical friend has gone away."
On CNN, a friend of the Kennedy family said on Tuesday that Kennedy "was the icon, the moral leader for the next generation of young Americans." This theme was repeated throughout the weekend, on TV, in newspapers, and on discussion groups on the Web. On MSNBC, Kennedy was described as "the flower of his generation, the inspiration for young America."
As the family friends and admirers spoke, images of young Kennedy playing in the White House, saluting his dead father, being surrounded with paparazzi, walking bare-chested at Brown University, were broadcast on the screen over and over again, all over the world. So were eerie pictures of helicopters and boats searching and searching, relatives grieving and ravaged.
Many of these images were visceral, highly charged, all playing to sadness and sympathy, all choreographed visually to underscore pathos and import, to unnerve and disconcert.
In a media fusion event like this one, they are repeated countless thousands of times over days. The same impulses exist on the Net, and Web, of course, they the imagery is missing, thus the impact muted. Even the so-called "serious" media got into the mythology business, speculating about family curses and the always mythical "Camelot."
"It's like John Kennedy being assassinated all over again," wrote a Chicago woman in an AOL chat room devoted to the plane crash all weekend. "A black shroud has come over all of us."
This quasi-hysterical media rhetoric underlies the humility and unpretentiousness of John Kennedy Jr.?s own life.
He deliberately decided to forego a life of moral leadership and public service. He was, from most accounts, a decent, likeable Manhattan media fixture, a publisher of a slick, glossy, not-in-any-sense great magazine that focused in equal parts on politics and Hollywood.
What his death underscores is that technology -- always an engine of social change -- is radically reshaping, even replacing journalism, becoming an engine of change in and of itself. In stories like this, technology eradicates the core function of journalism - clear-headed truth telling and grounded perspective.
Few places in the developing world are free from this kind of bombardment. A wire service reported that Scandinavian, German, and British newspapers were running as many pages on the plane crash as The Boston Globe was.
Websites also attract fans, mourners, admirers, fueling the individual grief from yet another direction. From Friday on, the message boards at Msnbc, Abcnews.com and Cnn.com have been overwhelmed by outpourings of mourning and admiration.
As with Princess Diana, the tone is often worshipful, especially over time, and as these images are repeated, a process almost akin to religious fervor. This isn't surprising. The tragic figure is no longer a human being with strengths and weaknesses, but increasingly like God himself, unfailingly noble, generous and decent.
This is a problem on many levels. One is that the evolution of this kind of media is tailor-made for some glamorous demagogue to come along and be instantly and globally martyred. So far, at least, we've been fortunate that these techno-tragedies have centered on people who seem benign, even good-hearted. Perhaps that isn't accidental.
Another is that the modern techno media -- increasingly owned by greedy, giant corporations -- has naked conflicts of interest to deal with when it comes to making editorial decisions about the stories they choose to cover so massively. Is the death of John Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law really the most important story in the world for five days now? This myopia is an increasingly toxic side effect of all encompassing techno-dramas.
Domestic civic discussions and issues came to a virtual halt during the year-long OJ Simpson affair. And after a year of being relentlessly bombarded by a techno-scandal, the Monica Lewinsky story, Americans were stunned to wake up and discover the Balkans at war, and us going with them. So technology becomes a potent social force as well as an agent of change.
Media executives rarely make editorial judgements for the public good. On cable news channels, tragedy - especially tragedy involving celebrity - greatly boosts ratings. Ratings equal money. Cable channels like CNN and MSNBC depend on mega-stories for audience and profitability. On cable, MSNBC in particular has become the noxious home of the techno-tragedy and scandal, increasingly melding its obsessive coverage with its online prescence. Increasingly techno-media like cable present civics as shrieking confrontations, not obviously, because it's informative but because it's entertaining. Politicians screaming about the impact of Jerry Springer on kids would be spending their time more wisely looking at the civic screamers on cable.
In an environment like the Kennedy tragedy coverage - much technology, many emotional images, no news -- the atmosphere becomes surreal. There are few facts but endless amounts of time, space, cyber and air, to fill. Yet the images are so ubiquitous as to be Orwellian.
John Kennedy Jr. and his father were strikingly different figures, historically, a reality also being lost in the overwhelming volume of coverage. The elder Kennedy desperately wanted elective office, and articulated strong political visions. His son didn't.
The younger Kennedy was not the icon, symbol, or defining personality for young Americans, especially the increasingly important and influential generation building the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Kennedy Jr. was much more of a traditional, mainstream Eastern journalistic and political celebrity. He seemed disinterested in the young's most interesting, transcendent contemporary accomplishment -- the Internet. That says nothing bad about him, but it undermines the notion that the symbolic moral and cultural leader of the next generation has been cut down in the prime of life.
Sad as it us, the news from Martha's Vineyard ultimately says more about technology than it does about any individual people.
How do we deal with the fact that the very institutions we depend on for clarity and perspective provide neither? And that technology itself is becoming the end, not the means for some of our most powerful media?
Thanks to technology, images move quickly. Truth and clarity lags far behind. When it comes to sorting out the difference, we are on our own.
The media wouldn't put this stuff on the box, unless people lapped it up. The fact is, people are easily manipulated by the media; a suggestion that some one important has died makes most people think that some one important _has_ died.
First of all, what the hell is with the term "techno-media?" That's completely meaningless. The internet hasn't changed media much at all. As many people have already pointed out, this type of journalism has been around forever. So what that you can now watch CNN and go to CNN.com; there's no fundamental difference.
I think that the news agencies should pick a dead or dying person, at random, each week and do blanket coverage of them. You could get cute childhood pictures and home movies. Hell, even doctor some up, it's all just entertainment anyway...
People bitch, whine, and complain about Media monopolies, "mass indoctinations" and the like, and I just don't get it.
We live in a free country. If you don't like the fact that JFK jr gets this spotlight, turn off the television, and pick up an alternative magazine and savor the alternatives.
Alternatives to the mainstream media exist. They always have existed, and they always will exist.
If other people seem infatuated with the ongoing soap opera of things like OJ Simpson, let them. Just because other people rot their minds doesn't mean that anyone else has to.
I can understand a loss of a personal icon; for
example I clearly remember the day that Stevie
Ray Vaughan died - I enjoy his music greatly and
wish that he were around to make more of it.
However, I doubt that even 1% of the people who
have an outpouring of grief were subscribers of
George magazine.
I think that the media is largely controlled by
baby boomers who are nostalgic for JFK Sr. Most
of the people alive today remember what happened
back in the 60's, unlike the people like me who
were conceived in that period.
People in the 60's probably had to deal with lots
of World War II nostalgia just like we have to
deal with Kennedy nostalgia... that's just the
way it is. Once the older generation passes, so
will Kennedy coverage...
Mark
While reading the article, did you happen to notice that the author of the "copied" article was one Jon Katz, with an e-mail at slashdot.org?
I don't always like what he writes, but at least I try to pick legitimate nits.
Katz quite often recycles his Freedom Forum articles for /. (or vice versa). I suggest that Rob should simply put a link to the other site instead of reproducing Katz's entire articles here, to cut down on bandwidth.
...the USA desperately needs a royal family.
...on Martha's Vineyard?
The runway.
...Going down on Gay Head. (the name of the airport on Martha's Vineyard, you dolt!)
"Picking up the Pace" Department:
Used to be that Kennedies drowned their women one at a time!
...He wanted to crash his cousin's wedding.
Katz is right, but this is not technology's fault. It has far more to do with media conglomeration (a fact that Katz touches on, but doesn't seem to attribute enough weight to) and a public that is distressingly under-educated when it comes to politics and history.
How many of today's young people care about substantive discussions of real political or social issues? How many of today's young people care about understanding the US' real role in international affairs (or international affairs in general)? Not many. Ironically, to the extent that JFK Jr. eschewed politics (or at least, political leadership and direct personal involvement in political debate), perhaps he really is a "moral leader" or "moral icon" for this generation.
The type of coverage that Katz describes is facilitated in part by technolgy. Technology is neccessary to create the powerful images and beam them instantly all over the world. However, the real driving force behind the coverage is not technology itself, but greedy corporations deliberately avoiding presenting content of real import to a public which represents a ready-made market for lustrous crap.
Welcome to the good life!
...together?
One more bullet!
Three funerals and a wedding.
> What I think he did was panic. He flew into a
> bank of mist/clouds, then decided to go low to
> get under them realized he was too low and not
> coming out of the mist, so he tried to do a
> climbing turn. He stalled and went into a spin.
What you're saying is that because he wasn't
properly trained, a simple situation turned into
an emergency. And that's why he crashed. There
is no excuse.
Link 1
Link 2
Mother Theresa is a media celebrity too.
OK, this was a reasonable response (I wasn't trolling). However, I think that not filing is dumb. I have done this flying off of grass strips in West Texas, but that was bout it -- watch the sock and pay attention. This wasn't in the middle of counties the size of Rhode Island with 300 people in them -- this was in one of the busiest areas of the country. I just don't see it. You are correct that the gear wouldn't have mattered at that speed, but still -- if he had had to ditch, what was he going to do, dog paddle for 48 hours? And if he was, where was the flight plan (again)? And of course he had been flying at night -- but if you are smart you get some seat time in the daytime. You take most of the weekends over the course of a year, do Dallas, Amarillo, San Angelo or something to get used to how it feels so you can watch the sky and the guages instead of feeling like you are in a plane. I am sorry, but I really, really don't know how else this is handled. Maybe we are weird down here. Of course, there is even less of a chance of being rescued in West Texas if you go down than there would be off the Atlantic coast, so it does breed caution. On that issue, yes, he was flying an easy route -- I know and you know often that leads to people not paying attention and thinking -- before, during, and after you do anything. Which is why you need the seat time, in the daylight, when you have time to get used to thinking.
I think that you have a plausible cause, BTW. That seems likely. And it is the sort of thing that experience cures.
I suppose that I was being a little harsh, but every time that this happens, I am always waiting for more jregs from the FAA. And I always file a plan when I can, I am very anal about walk-arounds, I use synthetic everything, I sprung for the Collins stuff when I didn't have to, etc., etc. Flying a small plan should be completely safe these days.
The 911 metaphor is not quite the same here - with a drunk driver and a porsche, his companions would be presented with a very common metaphor, and one that's heard on an almost daily basis - don't drink and drive.
Whereas with a plane and water, it probably wouldn't occur to most people that flying over water at night is any more dangerous than over land during the day. Yes, it makes sense when you think about it - but what would have prompted them to do that? Our primarly collective experience with planes, barring the widely publicized accidents, is that of waiting, getting on, getting off, and leaving. The intermediary time, the landscape, the weather, is generally ignored.
>>If we call this ultimate act of Kenedy Stupidity (there are many examples) a'trajedy', what do we reserve for mass destruction? Earthquakes? Floods? Famine?
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. - J. Stalin
If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a tragedy. But if someone pulled him out, that would, alas, be a calamity. - B. Disraeli
Yeah, you missed it. The whole idea of the essay was that technology has enabled this transformation in the mass media and that further changes in technology are only going to perpetuate the trend. The article is about the impact of technology.
this should get moderated up for being funny!
/. moderators seem to have the worst sense of humor
Although the technology that enables instantaneous global journalism is what created the situation, the problem here is that a very small, tightly networked group of "Westerners" from the rich industrialized nations are controlling the far majority of global media.
The "major" media continue to slam the Web as a means of delivering information-- constantly reminding you that there's no way to judge how accurate or "fair" Web news is-- because it's a threat to their oligarchy. 500 channels of the digital cable future? It won't matter, since they'll all be owned by the same old white guys. Alternative TV news channels, like CityTV in Toronto and NY1 in New York City, couldn't even remain unaffected by the Kennedy crash-- the media giants have created such a culture for their specialized product (here I'm agreeing with Mr. Katz' article) that the little guys have to play the same card to hope to compete.
But again, technology is not to blame for the sorry state of affairs; the consolidation of the global media attention span into 15 or 20 corporations' pockets is the problem.
The way this guy jumps all over the media hype (though, always with "the other" viewpoint) makes him just as guilty as all the other journalist in the media. Watch his pocket grow too.
Anyone remember the Simpsons where the advertisements were killing everyone?
(realizing the irony of adding to a discussing by saying we shouldn't be discussing it...)
I work for one of the networks. I keep saying, "Hey, it's no big deal. It's just a magazine editor who died" But, it's all about ratings. If they (we) didn't air it, the people (the mass herd who don't THINK) will go elsewhere
sigh
If it bleeds, it leads
I agree with you; the amount of media coverage given this even is insanely out or proportion. I also object to millions of dollars of taxpayer money being spent to find and recover bodies, then to turn around and dump them back into the water again! (Can you say "irony"?!?) I don't understand people making a hero out of somebody that screwed up badly, costing his own life and two others. And I really resent the implication that somehow JFK Jr. represented his whole generation; I'm 38, the same age as Kennedy, as he sure as hell doesn't speak for me!
or so said some Roman luminary, we've bread and a media circus.
I'm kinda glad the bozo's are infatuated with a 5day blitz about some event that has absolutely no physical impact on my or their lives, like an oil embargo or NKorean missle would. Keeps them outta my hair so I can get stuff done.
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, so the political agendas are set by the boards of Disney's, Viacom's et. al of the world who decide what issues to cover and what to let die. Even Gates/Microsoft® knows that as they try to morph into a media Co.
But this IS old hat rehashed stuff. Back to code...
Chuck
(AC in the field)
Oh my God!
Does this tragedy dash my hopes of a sequel sequel to the "Wing Commander" movie?
The problem with the media is they need to constantly come up with "news" on a daily and/or even hourly basis to keep cash flowing into their coffers. A quick blurb on CNN saying "JFK Jr's plane is missing.. more details when they become available" would have been sufficient. Then when the wreckage was found, go on the air and say "JFK Jr's plane found. All dead." and that is it. Why do we need 5 days of news that was basically just pilots talking about how they would have not flown if they were him, their analysis of what might have happened, and footage of Martha's Vineyard?
GOD'S WOUNDS!
Who gives a tinker's toss about the media...or Katz's prattling about jpegs of the Kennedy's being sucked through the bandwidth like so many oranges through a hosepipe.
John...are you a raging queen up for your menopause...or is it that you just want to bore us to tears with your attempts at journalism.
Definitely too over-the-top for me...
Keep taking the medication John...and...break an arm...please.
It's that feeling they have of "If I just watch for 5 more minutes they just MIGHT discover the plane wreckage." It's what had us all glued to the tube during Desert Storm watching those bombs drop. :-) It was beautiful.
Oh my God, they killed Kennedy!
I have now lived 20 years without television. It is a beautiful world here. I encourage you to join me.
Thanks for the MS-HTML, Katz. Didn't you get your ass chewed off about this last time? Please get a real computer, or fix the perl code in /. to convert MS-ASCII into ISO 8859-1.
Hell, I'm 30, and I have no idea what the big deal is. I have a bad feeling that it's going to get a lot worse as the boomer's get older and die off.
AC
Greek--the Java bytecode of its day--
wow, did they have computers back then?
I'd say Katz was stating the obvious, but if we'd all figured it out and not bothered with five days of JFKjr nonsense, he'd not have said this. On another note, "the controversial Mother Theresa"? I'm not sure where the controversial part came in; I thought she was as unabashedly good as they got.
there are old pilots, but there are no OLD, BOLD pilots."
JFK Jr. killed himself, his wife and his sister-in-law flying in IFR circumstances without an IFR rating.
I used to be an avid reader of Time, NewsWeek and all the major newspapers. One day in the early 80's, while setting up a satellite dish, I watched on an ABC news feeder Ronald Regan arrive at a NOW convention in New Orleans and speak for 15 minutes. He arrived to a standing ovation, told about a dozen jokes during his speach (all but one evoked rich laughter) and then left to a standing ovation. Later the news came on. The 2 minute piece was titled "Regan gets mixed reviews at New Orleans", then they showed a 15 second clip of RR giving the *one* joke that no one laughed at, and gave Elenor Schmeal 1 minute and 45 seconds of airtime to claim that RR would drag women back to the stoneage by their hair.
It was then that I realized that ABC had an agenda. Since then I have noticed that the other major talking heads have the same agenda. Anything extreme left of center, which makes what used to be the center seem extreme right.
The best source of news today is the Internet.
Stories like this are all part of the "Dumbing Down of America" that has been happening over the past few decades. When you get a large enough group of people together, the collective IQ of the ggroup is going to be rather low. Today's popular press has the unique ability to influence huge numbers of mindless people who believe everything they read or see, and sit there drooling, lapping up everything thrown at them.
What was so special about JFK, Jr.? He was a rich aristocrat publishing some rag that no one read anyhow. I can somewhat understand some of the outpouring over his father's death, since despite the fact that JFK Sr. was a lying crook, he was the president of the US. The popular press can make anyone look good to the mindless masses. How someone like Ted Kennedy can get elected over and over again is beyond me. The man is a murderer and a drunkard.
What was so special about Diana that she deserved the attention her death got? Sure, she was trying to fight for human rights and all that other stuff, but what did she *really* do for the world?
Many people also do not stop to think about how their news may be influenced by the parent corporations that own them. How many people sit down to watch the nightly news and think, wow, I am watching the Disney News Channel (ABC), or the GE News Channel (NBC), or the Westinghouse News Channel (CBS)?
I find myself more and more quickly withdrawing into my own little world where things like this cannot enter. Thankfully my wife and some of my close friends agree with me enough to share my little world. Sometimes I think that we are the only sane peope in a mass of insanity or mind control. Look at how the popular press has convinced people that Jan 1, 2000 is the start of the millenium. The constant hammering has caused people to stop thinking for themselves. After all, it doesn't take much to realize that 999 != 1000.
I worry that someone, somewhere has a hidden agenda with all of this. Our basic rights guaranteed by the constitution are slowly being eroded by the government and lobbyists and no one seems to notice, or care. The press is focused either on the left wing, liberal, democratic movement, or the latest semi-famous person to die. It really frightens me to think about where our country is going. What will be left of the US Constitution for my children to enjoy? I wish I didn't feel so helpless about this...what can we, the enlightened, do to fix our once great nation??
Certainly the Internet is a start, but even that is being dumbed down by the likes of AOL and the US Government. Groups like ICANN and the WIPO want to destroy the technical infrastructure of the Internet because it does not properly protect the rights of trademark holders. This is all very scary...we are a very powerful group of people, but we don't seem to want to excercise our rights. I hate to use this term, but Geeks of the world need to unite.
Hey kid, didn't they teach you that "could care less" and "couldn't care less" mean the opposite, and that you said the wrong one? What are you, an engineer?
So, how 'bout sharing that sick post with us? I'm interested in feeling "hurt."
On the evening the crash happened, the biggest public (non-private) TV station in Germany changed the evening program and inserted a special 20 minutes broadcast about it.
I couldn't believe it. All I used to know about JFK jr was that he was JFK senior's son, and now I learned that he was a irresponsible pilot. But Germany, secretly dreaming of becoming an U.S. state, adopted the cult about a man no one ever was talking about before he died.
That's really embarassing. (I live in Germany.)
As with the rest of the boobtube addicts of your generation, you manifest a terrible gender bending illiteracy. "le petit femme" indeed -- when did she grow a dick?
Turn away from a "life" a television. Get a real life. Learn something.
Fricking bottom-feeders.
So, the new corporate Slashdot joins the rest of the mass media.
...
Can't we declare this, at least, a John-John free zone?
Here's the way the story should have played on the evening news. After the first commercial break: "Search is under way for a private plane that failed to arrive at the Martha's Vineyard airport. Massachusetts police said that the plane, containing magazine editor John Kennedy Jr, his wife, and sister-in-law, is feared to have crashed into the ocean. No evidence of survivors has yet been found. Kennedy, the editor of George Magazine, is the son of former president John F. Kennedy." That's what the coverage would have been if his name had been, say, James Carter, Jr
I don't see how any of the media event examples mentioned have much to do with being technology driven. Cable TV is hardly new technology.
It is simply the same old celebrity driven news that we've had for years.
I'm sure the Lindberg baby kidnapping and the crash of the Hindenberg turned into a celebrity driven media obsessions too. Sure, the flow of "news" about those events was slower than what is going on now. But pick any celebrity story since the seventies, and I'm sure the pattern is pretty similar.
All that said, I do think the past couple hype explosions have been pretty bad. But I don't think technology has had any real role in that.
False.
Sorry, Frenchy, I don't give quite enough of a crap about the French language to bother spending more than a few moments correctly parrodying it.
As for learning something - I became an anti-intellectual a few years ago. The only worthwhile knowledge is that necessary to do your job and make money, knowledge you find personally interesting, knowledge of how to get laid, and knowledge of how to get huge. Everything else is the stuff of pretentious, self deluded nerds sitting in coffee shops pretending to derive real _pleasure_ out of boring, unoriginal intellectual conversations.
>The only thing really interesting I heard along >this line was Pres. Clinton talking about a tour >of the White House he took JFK Jr. on just a few >months ago; in which JFK Jr. hadn't been in since >JFK Sr. was shot.
Of course this was a Clinton "look at me I'm the
center of the universe" lie. JFKJR's was
the guest of both Nixon and Reagan.
They talk about there being a mass outpouring of grief by society as a whole. But there isn't. The only grief is coming from the media itself, it does not reflect the feelings of society as a whole.
The only reason we're hearing so much about the kennedy "tragedy" is because there's nothing else for our myopic media to report. When CNN is broadcasting 24 hours a day, it has to fill those hours with something -- preferably something that is ongoing (to keep viewers attention across commercials). Usually, it's just a different anchor telling the same story in a slightly different way.
You are a caricature of yourself. You'll never get a job above mining coal with that kind of idiocy. "parrodying" indeed. I hope you get to middle school soon.
As an effort to boost ratings, news programs are becoming increasingly sensational. Fancy intros, theme songs, and copter cams try to draw viewers in and give them entertainment. This clouds the facts. News should be about facts. That why I watch Jim Leher to get the news. If I want entertainment, I'll buy a monkey.
Besides Mander, don't forget Postman's _Amusing_Ourselves_To_Death_.
And throw your TV away!
Can you imagine what the poor guy was going through about the last 10 minutes of his life?
"Turn here" "pull over for directions"
Do this do that. It was probably suicide not an accident.
John K. Jr is a boomer thing. Gen-Xers like myself really don't care one way or the other. He was never part of my life. He is just another dead boomer millionaire
Let's see...
Place wire clippers in preferred hand.
Firmly grasp power cord in other hand.
Clip the plug from the cord.
Unplug television from wall outlet.
Ow.
At least we will all be spared the possibility of another Kennedy in Washington.
One thing that has been overlooked here is the strong sexual undecurrent running just beneath the surface of these stories. JFK Jr.'s death would not have received nearly the same level of attention had he been a victim of, say, an aneurism or some fast-acting disease.
The truth is that on some level we find these horrific accidents perversely _sexy_ - the crush of metal, the perfect bodies yielding under these unimaginable forces, the blood. Think of the direct parallels between Cronenberg's "Crash" and Princess Di's fate.
The whole story can be summed up this way:
JFK Jr. - he died sexy...
As the saying goes, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots."
At the same time that americans are coming to believe that "Jerry Springer" and "Wildest Police Videos" are quality programming, the influence of Technologically driven media is gaining even more in influence. Word from the box is now the word of god, and the internet is currently playing the role of holy ghost, quickly approaching the messiah in reputation. Whoever it was that talked about open sourcing THE BOOK when they stopped using latin was correct, but like Linux in our own time, most individuals now feel it neccessary to overpay, learn nothing, and be passive rather than stretch themselves and actually better their lives.
Sigh.
Plus, I'm sitting in a corporate office, not doing IS because my contact at a temp agency I'm signed with lied to me.
-Zonk
..
I have been saying about the same thing. They do dumb, BAD things (murder, rape, bootlegging, gangsterism, nazi sypathysing, etc.) and yet the media IDOLIZES them, because they are "liberal poster children".
I really think there is a bad gene in the Kennedy line. They seem intelligent, but give them half a chance and the macho assholes are skiing into trees!
BTW, who moderated this down? That sets a bad example. The AC was basically telling the truth and stating (I suppose) his honest opinion. I don't consider it a Troll just because people may not agree with it.
Does your moderation software leave an audit trail? If it doesn't, it should. It seems some Kennedy fanatic is moderating down any anti-Kennedy post. You really should look into this.
Tom
>Any votes for Darwin Awards?
Too late. He's already been nominated (a few hundred times).
Then we wouldn't have to have this discussion now, would we?
I disagree with Jon that it is the technology which makes this sort of 'People Magazine' journalism possible, but the people's insatiable demand for something more interesting than their own lives. Even a century ago, the media played the same games to sell more papers - An english general was trapped in South Africa and the media went on about it for almost a year! Even the Romans had media frenzies over gladiators, army generals, etc. So to say that this JFK Jr. scenario is a new phenomenon enabled by technology is bunk.
This very cultural and non-technological phenomenon will probably never go away - it's a person's own responsibility to make their lives interesting, thank you.
I just wish they could go back to doing it by reading Harlequinn Romances...
Read _The Economist_ (www.economist.com.
The closest you'll get to this sort of public wailing and weeping is an analysis of just why Americans (or Brits in the case of Di) feel compelled to act this way.
You'll also learn such issues ignored by the US media as what wars are going on in Africa, how the Indonesian elections are going etc.
Maynard
Thank you! That was exactly what was going through my mind when the details became clear. I have been around small planes most of my adult life and stuff like that gets you killed. His luck ran out. Period.
I am going to add my vote.
What has been "scientifically proven"? That no one makes you read the media, or that it is uniformly garbage? Either way, you are a uniform idiot for trying to say that.
Was JFK2 completely eviscerated on impact?
I'm the same anonymous coward who started this thread. I don't have time to waste with that silly registration form.
When I saw it was Katz, I knew it was worse than usual slashdot fare. But I had a chance to get the first post, so I moved in for the kill.
There isn't ANY useful information in the mass media. It entirely exists to (i) tell you what you're supposed to buy next year, and (ii) rub the serial numbers off the press releases sent out by government, military and corporate PR agencies.
Wired, for instance, exists for people who make $80,000 a year and $85,000. It's readers fantasize about getting rich, but they won't get rich.
If you want accurate information, get it yourself. Read books. Talk to people. Turn off your TV and go for a walk. You'll learn something. Rather than bitch about Microsoft, the KDE license, or war pig Stallman's moral posing, write some software.
If you live your life rather than sit in front of the tube and let people program it for you, you just might learn something.
Hey...I'm forty something and don't give a rat's ass about any Kennedy on the planet. As far as I'm concerned, they can all take a flying leep in a lake. Oh...that's just what one did. As I saw in another post, At least this is the possibility of one less Kennedy in Washington.
Wow. The media may have your rapt attention Jon, but it doesn't have mine. Try watching a little less TV. And don't say you don't watch ALOT of TV, you already gave that away.
Anyway, although Jon and his friends were swept up by Princess Di and JFK Jr., From my view point the audience of the media overload during those times is about 100% women, especially with Princess Di. My wife got up to watch a few minutes of the Princess Di funeral, as did some chicks she works with, but I don't know a single guy who expressed much grief at all. Go figure. When men start making 70% of the purchaces, and stations other than the comedy channel go for the male viewing audience, you might see a change. I wouldn't hold my breath.
The dissemination of information will never be a bad thing, even when there's a bias. Jon showed us himself with the Columbine shootings that there's an alternative source for information.
So, uh, who's acting like a demagogue?
He was the "prince" of America. Although most people couldn't even tell you where the "prince" was staying on any single day.
/.
Hell, most of the people couldn't tell you where the Kennedy family LIVED prior to his death.
The "journalists" elected him "prince" because he was rich and cute and not up on rape charges.
This is because the "journalists" need SOMETHING to write about. The public LOVES "princes" and "princesses". Take a look at the non-stop coverage of Di's death.
And now we have MORE coverage of it in
Why? What POSSIBLE impact could this person have on MY life? On your life? He was the son of an assasinated president.
Can anyone name Nixon's son?
Can anyone name Carter's son?
Regan's son?
Bush's son is easy (name them after yourself).
But if any of them die, then they become media celebrities for a month.
Bite me.
Unless you were a subscriber to "George", JFK, jr had ZERO impact on your life. You didn't know him. He didn't know you. You weren't invited to his parties, he didn't show at yours.
This has nothing to do with technology. Tech just means it can spread further, faster.
We go through the same thing whenever ANYONE famous dies (flags at half mast, tons of articles in the paper, etc).
This is trivia. This is something people without a life can use to pretend they aren't as pitiful as they are. They can share "common bonds" with everyone else who doesn't have a life and is upset by his death.
It truly is sad that of all that was said, all you can focus on is a single sentence about Diana, which still holds true. You seem to miss the entire point of what was written. What has she really done for the world? Not much more than the original author did for the world, however, when he/she/it dies, do you think they are going to get the same kind of coverage that Diana did?
I think that the original poster raised some EXCELLENT points, especially with regards to corporate influences on the media, and the slow erosion of our constitutional rights.
If anyone here is a troll, it seems to be you. Back under the bridge, Diana sycophant.
Hey, does that mean I'll feel bad when Curt's daughter dies in a stupid accident?
Maybe I'm just very callous, but I don't think I'll even care. Curt was famous and made some good music and Courtney is rather entertaining, but unless their daughter can directly affect me herself, I don't care about her.
I just don't see where the media linkage between parents and children comes from.
True, there are stories to be done about how the children felt and what they experienced while growing up with a famous parent.
But that is still more about the parent than the child.
When the child dies, what has changed?
And Rush is one of them.
Who cares what he can get some woman to say. She is a moron, also.
Some people will constantly romaticise the past because it's safer than LIVING in the world today.
I was here when history HAPPENED.
I watched the Wall come down.
I watched the "Red Menace" open McDonald's.
I watched aparthied wither.
Morons will always be with us.
people need to start beleiving in themselves...what did this silver spoon born into wealth guy do for anyone anyway...people need to get a grip on reality...nothing is going to change because of this accident, as tragic as it was for the families. My condolences got out to them...not anybody else.
We need to choose better role models in a time of declining numbers of good people...just because this guy led a fantasy lifestyle that many people dream of living, does not make him a good person.
I don't know if I can explain this to anyone who hasn't been through it, but I'll try.
Watching the president being shot was shocking. It was scary.
Getting a phone call in the middle of the night saying that your father has been killed in a car wreck is much more shocking and scary and terrible.
Hearing that someone's son is dead is sad. I wasn't shocked. I couldn't even name his wife prior to the crash.
Why isn't anyone talking about HER? Doesn't she have any significance in this event? Was she just a prop for his icon status?
People die every day. Their families suffer. The people who loved them suffer. How many times are any of you going to wake up at night thinking you've just had a nightmare where JFK, Jr. was killed and then realize that it wasn't a nightmare and you'll be awake the rest of the night?
Stories such as these do nothing but trivialize the real pain that comes from losing someone special to you.
He was a person. He might have been a really nice person to those who knew him.
But he was a stranger to me. He was a stranger to 99.999% of the people who were watching the reports.
Put some perspective into it.
Think about how you feel now and think about life after someone in your family dies. What you feel for Kennedy is nothing.
Either that or you're pitifully shallow.
you fucking whore. ass whore. punk fucker. shit stain. fuck! shit! fuck you!
Thats the only reason anyone gives a shit.
Why does "stuff that matters" get ignored just because there is overwhelming media coverage on trivial items?
You are assuming that "stuff that matters" was covered BEFORE the advent of the new technological media (which it wasnt)
More probably, like Queen said: Nothing really "matters".
As we watch the current images of fish eating the Kennedy remains, as if fish flakes, let's look back at what this man accomplished.
He was able to salute at the age of 3 (this was a gesture planned by the family, not the spontanious behavior that many believe).
He was mugged at 13, in central park no less.
He went to law school, and failed the bar repeatedly (I bet someone knows how he really finally passed it).
He started a magazine (hmmm, well he was the 'name' behind it, but he really did not start it).
He learned to fly any quickly killed himself.
It boils down to the fact that JFK Jr was a stupid fuckup, and america loves its stupid fuckups. Anyone who actually feels anything but pity for the families should re-examine their lives.
This isn't the "loss of a generation"(tm). Except to the immediate/extended family, this isn't much of a loss at all.
If Java is all that portable, why does it run so few places?
If it's all that expressive, why must you write so much to do so little?
Hey, you're right! I do remember where I was during the Challenger accident, but I do not even remember Reagan getting shot.
I don't even give a damn about JFK jr. I've never even heard of his magazine George until Friday. I think it is ridiculous for the country to lower the flags for him. He has done nothing important to this country, and he is just as insignificant as anyone of us. Even if he is the son of a famous president.
This is not to say that I do not feel sorrow for the Kennedy family. It *is* a terrible tragedy.
Coward, Anonymous
I'm 21. My family have been Kennedy watchers for years and years. One of the first books my dad bought when he came from Greece was a How and Why book about JFK. Most of the things we enjoy today, from civil rights to stabs at international peace were symbolized by Kennedy. Would we have landed on the moon if it weren't for him? Could anyone else have handled Krushchev so artfully?
There was the age factor too. JFK was one of the youngest and so far the only Catholic president to be elected. *That* says a lot about the US, I think.
Now his son - well - he was not just the son of two people. He was the son of the entire world. Everytime he was on TV my mother would comment on what a fine young man he turned out to be, unlike those "other" Kennedy boys, and she always said it with a certain pride, as if she had raised him herself. Wouldn't every mother like to have a son so intelligent, so handsome, with such a promising future?
Yes, people die horrible deaths all the time. A few months ago, an entire family was wiped out when their mini van was struck by a freight truck that turned into the wrong lane. I WILL NEVER forget the picture of that squashed van.
JFK Jr. was a symbol. The Kennedys are all symbols of the things that America aspires to be, or at least hopes to. While much of America is rootless, they had family homes, a strong family and a spirit of adventure. JFK Jr. was a fine young man who believed that people were not so jaded.
I will always love the Kennedys tho I'm not an American. I love them for their charisma and their strength. They are a public family very much so. Their children are the children of a country, of lost hope and idealism.
My mother and I cry and cry, still. It is so sad, it is so unfair, it is so tragic. We identify with the Kennedys because their lives seem like a Shakespearean drama, we respond to these elements that are as old as time. History is filled with heroic families, and the States' just happen to be the Kennedys.
Don't give up hope. Don't think of him as the son of some dead guy. The Kennedys symbolize our collective dreams and idealism. Think, when was the last time a politician was so loved? Who cried for Nixon? Does anyone cry for the brain-crippled Reagan?
Call me sentimental, call me whatever. I don't care. God bless the Kennedys.
ESR dying would get much more than 1 week of coverage on slashdot. RMS and Linus would get even more.
I live in New York. I don't have cable and I don't watch the TV very often. I do read a main stream newspaper(New York Times), 3 or 4 days a week. I stay away from the local tabloids -- Daily News and New York Post. I stay clear of web-based news sources rooted in broadcast media.
I think the problem with mass media is the deliberate use of well researched marketing techniques to evoke emotional responses, to lengthen the viewer/readers 'time spent with' them and to insure that they 'come back soon'. This of course is to sell advertising and build brand recognition. Fancy looking graphics, image montages and live remote broadcasts are among some
of the tools used to these ends.
There is another side to the problem whose impact is felt even if you try your best to avoid the hype in print, on the tube and on-line.
On the streets, busses, subways, resturants, parks, people are talking about these events.
From nay-sayers like myself ranting about the evils of media, to conspiracy minded radicals, to the truly saddened folk believing they lost a old friend-- the last great one.
Additionally, here in New York, there have been many streets, in neighborhoods miles apart, blocked off by enormous mobile satellite trucks, emblazoned with logos clearly visible from blocks away. Parked for days. Some of these trucks have come from as far away as Philly or Boston. With increased police activity and Presidential motorcades, the city becomes an obstacle course, reducing the local quality of life.
It takes years of iconification by media coverage and marketing to create this kind of international folk hero. If President Kennedy was spared and President Carter killed, would society be worshiping Amy Carter?
I wasn't trying to be combatative -- I think that flying out more than a few miles really requires some sort of raft. Look -- I learned in the military, I have about (Christ, you made me count it up) 34 years of this since I started in SE Asia, I was taught by people who flew The Hump in WWII, and everyone tends to err on the side of caution and pilots who did The Hump followed by Air America and other stuff (Congo, Rhodesia, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua --- and even more dangerous stuff in the normal service of oil companies around Texas) are now dying peacefully in their sleep. I want to die in my sleep. So if I were doing Brownsville to New Orleans, yes, I would carry a raft, a .357 (hammerheads), and so on. And I don't think that I am silly. I think that other people don't take this sort of thing seriously enough. One of the reasons that I liked the systems people that I hung out with ten years ago when I was recovering from a close encounter with a drunk in a Suburban and couldn't walk was that they also took stuff very seriously. That was when I got into UNIX, as my eyes and hands worked fine. They also read the manuals and checked their work. It wasn't flying, but it was a similar environment. I know that this isn't a UNIX forum strictly, but I hope, really, that you understand that I am not being needlessly and pointlessly anal. I am familiar with VFR night flying -- I had to do too damned much of that in Vietnam and Laos and it was and is more dangerous that anything other than extreme situations warrant. My basic rules for teaching people (because you are quite right that the difference in extreme)? Do at least 500 hours in the daytime in something large with an experienced pilot, then try night flying, with IFR right behind it, and for God's sake make a few of these hours coming into fields like Muller (although that has changed to Bergstrom now), Hobby, Love and so on -- dodging Southwest pilots trying to break speed records is very good training. Sometime well later, try doing it alone, at night -- and you will do it IFR, because at that point you cannot think about not paying attention. I wasn't suggesting that familiarly breeds comtempt for most pilots, but I have seen this with new ones -- that is why you spin them, to make them "pay attention" for a long time. Right? And yes, I think that flying at night over water matters -- I guess that it depends on the water, and yes, the mist matters (although I really don't know what the conditions were). I know that a Caravan is like a Piper in that neither is like a Lear, but I have found that it is easier to lose your bearings in a small plane and unless you are paying a lot of attention to the guages, you will be in trouble.
I understand your point, I guess I am just a paranoid old fart. But, I am still around, and everyone I taught to fly is too.
To say the aforementioned media indulgence is unavoidable is untrue. If you don't watch TV, you don't have to see it. I, for instance, have never seen any of the images that Mr. Katz mentions. There is no news in Mr. Katz's article, television has increasingly been this way since it began, and paper journalism suffered the same worship of the sensational before this. The facts are, this is what the unwashed mashes like to watch. They like being led around by their emotional nose. This is even more true of advertising.
If anything, technology has helped us AVOID this deification of celebrity and celebrity spawn. I can read the news and keep up on current events without putting up with any of the imagery, by using internet news sites and turning off images.
Viva la internet, humanity's best hope for freedom from mind control.
Nobody makes you read the mass media. It's garbage. That's been scientifically proven since Harold Laswell developed content analysis in the 1930's and used it to determine Nazi goals by analyzing Nazi propaganda in WWII.
Just don't read the crap. You'll get a little contamination from your friends and relatives, but other than that you can stay clean. I had a lot of respect for Malda because he didn't do the same thing as everybody else in masscomm until you came along to contaminate the watering hole.
Why don't you go write for Rolling Stone or something?
C'mon, JFK Jr. repeatedly flunked the State Bar Exam and proved his stupidity in
his final, idiotic act: attempting to
fly that craft at night, over open water, without
the proper training and with a bum foot.
Kennedys have a history of doing dumb things
that get people killed: Teddy (how grotesque can one man appear?) and Mary Jo. And sometimes they do society a service by killing themselves: the child molester who hit a tree.
In JFK Jr's case, he ought to be vilified for
taking the lives of two innocent people in his
stupid, macho, final act.
What I find difficult about this article is the apparent claim that technology has changed the way people view celebrity. In fact, the mythologization of public figures after their deaths is not exactly new - think of the the Roman Emperors who, upon their deaths, were elevated to the status of god, and had temples built to them. Or equivalently, when discussing the way Lady Diana Spencer has been seemingly elevated to the status of "Saint" - why not remember what kind of ex-post-facto assumptions of perfection are routinely made by Catholics about the genuine article...
What technological advances in the dissemination of news have changed, if anything, is the rapidity and impact of this phenomenon. Now we have a woman becoming a saint and a man becoming a myth within hours of their deaths, rather than months. We have practically inescapable bombardment of the individual with these modes of thinking, regarding people they don't even know.
But if anything, this will tend to diminish the tendencies JonKatz is decrying. After all, overdose of some behaviour usually leads to a balancing reaction. What technology has done is expose our irrationality and fickleness to us in a singularly bad light - the result of which will, one can hope, be a somewhat embarrased compensation for our worst excesses.
Increased communication flow is an opportunity for increased self-awareness. Just purely by statistics, SOME people are bound to take that opportunity.
I went to school in the same basic environment (Andover and Harvard). I grew up around the same kinds of people. This is not unusual. There is an abiding feeling among people from those classes (upper middle class -- not the upper class) that if they can buy their way in, they can do it, whether it is skiing hard courses, hunting big game, driving 911s fast, flying private planes, screwing everything that moves, and so on. As a result, they suffer the usual fates of people who try to do dangerous things without the proper care that training and any sort of apprenticeship deal would give you. I have actually lost count of the number of classmates from Andover who have died in sporting accidents (boats, glider, scuba problems, skiing, motorcycles, skydiving, etc.), private plane accidents, AIDS, getting eaten by something larger (like a bear, and no, no one was really surprised) that they were, and so on. The thrill-seeking combined with a lack of caution endengered by the lifetime reality of being able to buy your way out of any troble is and will continue to be lethal to people who fail to understand that you can't buy off the reaper. It is so typical of the middle class to believe otherwise.
This is just another example. It might as well have been a 911 on a raining night as a small plane. And, for that matter, both the 911 and the small plane would not have been at fault -- user error.
We should all be saying "He died as he lived -- like one of his own."
It is a real pity that he took some other people down with him, but they could have stayed. If they had gotten into a 911 with him after a few drinks they would have been as culpable in their own deaths as they were getting into a small plane with a low-hour pilot late in the day, flying visual, over water.
That wasn't the point that I was making, actually. I meant the common lack of judgement in both those decisions -- driving a 911 in the rain is hard (or used to be, anyway). An airplane required steady power and a cautious attitude to stay in the air. The metaphor for me would be "don't do something stupid." The result of the dive would have been the same on land, except that a)the plane would have been found far more quickly, b)the bodies would have been hamburger.
Let me give you some examples:
1. Classmates skiing at Telluride. Have a few drinks. Not paying attention. Skiing at dusk. One hits a tree and is paralysed. Was it drinking and skiing? Yes, the proximate cause would have been drinking and skiing but the real cause would have been being dumb enough to drink and ski.
2. Classmate goes driving while on vacation late in the UK. Turns the wrong way down a road and has a head-on with a truck. Dies. Was the problem those silly English laws about driving on the left side? No. Classmate wasn't paying enough attention. Dumb again -- you don't screw around with cars and speed if you aren't paying attention -- if you want to live.
3. Classmate flying a Cessna (I don't recall which one -- apparently one with a sterling safety record) decided to run up the Maine coast late in the evening in squall weather to get to his parent's house that evening. At some point, he decided to buzz his parent's house. Hits a tree top and pancakes. Was the problem those darned trees. No, not really.
See my point? The proximate cause of death was them hitting the water very fast. That was how they died, not why.
I wish all of you could understand how common this sort of thing is with these sorts of people and how little of a surprise it should be.
I have spent much less time around these sorts of people since Harvard. I have grown accustomed to people who don't die for stupid reasons. In fiancial markets, you work with a lot of people who came up the hard way, and they tend not to do stupid things like this. I remember hearing about the classmate who had died buzzing his parents from an old girlfriend who had always claimed that they had not been involved. She was horribly broken up about it and related the news to me while I was visiting my mother, crying. Sitting in the garden while my mother's gardener was putting in the new annuals, I thought at the time that people should be laughing at him. When she went inside, the gardener did just that and said "Stupid white boy." And I laughed. It never occurred to me to be offended because, well, that was as apt a summary as I could have come up with.
In the case of the younger Kennedy, I think that seeing it unsympathetically is very important. You note that "Our primarly collective experience with planes, barring the widely publicized accidents, is that of waiting, getting on, getting off, and leaving. The intermediary time, the landscape, the weather, is generally ignored." Well, yes, but that is because we aren't pilots. Most peoples' experience with brokers is calling and placing a trade. They have no idea what goes on -- that isn't their job. Even people looking for an offshore float of some kind only have a basic idea what is happening. That is the whole problem with hedges and derivatives, but that is a different rant. The younger Kennedy WAS a pilot and should have been paying attention.
There is a sign in the basement of the building in which I work on the loading dock that says "Think." That's all, just "Think." It is there to remind the people that work down there to pay attention lest they end the day with fewer digits than they started it with. They have to worry about it. The most I have to worry about it a paper cut, so I made up a sign for my desk that said "Hack." (Actually, I had one that said "Model" but it kept getting snatched.) Perhaps JFK Jr. needed one that said "Fly."
And I am being a smartass again.
Back to SAS.
Doesn't anyone else think the media has gone too far? I mean, 5 STRAIGHT days of coverage is a little extreme for an accident. Don't get me wrong, I think it was horrible tragety and deserved some of the coverage it got, but I'm not interested in hearing MSNBC's conolations.
And what about the Coast Gaurd/Navy/NTSB investigtion. FIVE DAYS. I'd like to think I'd get that kind of goverment support if I crashed my Cessna into the ocean, but the truth is that if this happened to anyone else, it would hardly get a 5-minute segment on the LOCAL news.
I guess this shows that royalty is alive and well in America.
I think John Katz raises some very important points. These days, there exists in many ways almost _too_ much media, at least from a traditional standpoint. This media often blows even small things way out of proportion. These days, anyone who can get a small group of people together and really rattle some sabers can get _national_ attention! However, as annoying and unhelpful as this is, and as much as it skews the signal to noise ratio, even these trivialities cannot compete in the least with the media hype over this "tragedy." I personally barely knew anything of Kennedy Jr. I had a vague awareness that he existed. Beyond that, I did not even know what he looked like until recently. Yet, he is supposedly an "icon" of "our" generation. I bet that *at least* half of the people I frequently associate with know less than I do of Kennedy Jr. The only real important "news" in this whole event was:
1) Kennedy's plane was missing.
2) The bodies of the people on board were found.
That is _IT_. Everything else (beyond perhaps some details about the investigation into the cause of the crash and what not) is FLUFF. Pure, unadulterated media hype fluff. Amercians are being bred on the stuff, and it is not exactly healthy. Of course, beyond that, I figured exactly what kind of "public sorrow" and that sort of CRAP this would generate and chose not to watch any news of any sort for a few days.. for example a month might do the trick. You people want something to grieve about? Grieve about something worthy! You know what this kind of coverage in essence costs? Why don't you funnel it elsewhere, such as aiding in _REAL_TRAGEDIES_OCCURRING_EVERY_FREAKING_DAY_. There are many MANY people and families out there that have many more problems than the Kennedies. The Kennedies have been famous, in the limelight, rich etc. etc. Simply read the description of Kennedy Jr.'s life. Sure, his father died when he was young, but _many_ peoples fathers have died when they were young. Beyond that, look at what else happened in his life. Hardly looks like a tragedy to me. Wealthy, educated at Brown University, comfortable etc. I wish the media would just back off on these types of issues. Or at the very least, cover 10 of the everyday tragedies that occur in many peoples lives for every one "tragedy" that happens to a famous person. Well, I better stop ranting because I have already wasted enough time on this issue. If I were anyone out there, I wouldn't waste my time watching the news for a while, and I wouldn't bother thinking about this crap either. Thank you and good night.
Yes, he was a luser. Think about it:
No flight plan? The luser will whine "but he didn't have to file a flight plan" and yes, you donw have to type pwd before rm *, but is is a very good idea, proven by experience.
No survival gear? When I was flying, years ago, that wasn't an option -- people would complain about the weight all the time. The lusers will say "but he wasn't required to carry gear" and yes, you aren't required to do your backups either, are you?
Flying at night, visual, with so few hours? WTF? I guess "deathwish" is a little strong, but that is really, really dumb. The lusers will say "but he thought that he would be OK." I don't know how to categorize the stupidity here.
Flying with passengers this way. That makes him a killer, just like his uncle, except he couldn't swim to safety.
At least he helped clean out the gene pool a little.
Any votes for Darwin Awards?
The generation tags put upon this man are a result of the media doing their best to assign people what they should think. The media, in all their liberalness, find people in the public eye and take them to unfathomable heights.
From what I've seen of JFK Jr over the years, he certainly seems like a nice guy. He didn't seek out to be the next King Arthur. He just wanted to live life on his own, making an identity for himself as something more than the son of JFK. When asked if he'll run for office, he would dodge the question saying basically, "Maybe someday." The minute he is presumed dead, he is named Senator, Governor, President, and THE primary symbol for an entire generation of young Americans -- exactly the thing he always avoided in his life.
Rush Limbaugh (no matter what you think of him) had a clip of a woman saying that since she wasn't alive in the 60's, she has been cheated out of experiencing history in the making. Let alone events like Communism collapsing, the Berlin wall going down, espionage at many levels of our military, Mother Teresa, the President being impeached. These are nothing to many people today because the media hasn't treated them as anything. What events are momentous (in media coverage) for this generation? Diana and JFK Jr dieing, cigarettes/guns/video games causing their associated evils, Michael Jackson touching little boys, OJ Simpson.
The media used to be about reporting objectively, now it all about politics -- getting you to think they way they want you to. Unfortunately, all too many people are lazy and make decisions like voting based on sound clips and such they see on the local news. There is also the motive of outdoing each other. One network has cameras looking at a ship several miles out, so they all do. Over three hours were dedicated to staring at tiny ships when the families were dumping the ashes. Out one side of their mouths they were saying, "We are respecting the families' wishes to not be around during this," meanwhile having cameras with 40 foot lenses so they can zoom in as much as possible. It's all about hype, not fact.
But where does all this "blow to a generation" come from? Honestly, people die all of the time in more tragic ways, and nobody bats an eyelash. Are people's lives so pathetically boring that they have to take the events in other people's lives and make them their own? All I can figure is that people like this kind of stuff because it gives them something to care about. Why they have nothing in their own lives to worry about, I won't pretend to understand.
Or maybe we should just lock the door of the cabin and post "No Trespassin'" signs around our property and try to forget about that whole "Outside World" thing.
And what exactly is "clean"? I mean, don't you think that Slashdot might just possibly have a eensy-weensy little bit of bias in the way it sets up discussions? I mean, do you *really* think this just started with Katz?
Look, take your own advice: If you have Katz, don't read 'em; you can even set your prefs so that you don't even have to look at his articles. If you still insist on "contaminating" yourself, why don't you go bitch to your dog or someone else who cares about it?
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
Technology has made mass hysteria and idiocy more obvious and annoying than at any other point in the past. Live and in living color on CNN "Talking head morons!" in stereo.
I'm sick of all of this JFK/JFK Jr/RFK/Princess Di Crap!
Crap is exactly what this stuff is. Sure, they might have been great people if you knew them, but NONE OF US DID! There has been this facade of Camelot manufactured by publicists, and the media that is supposed to make us think that the Kennedys are some great American success story. Joe Kennedy made the family fortune by bootlegging booze during prohibition. Joe Kennedy bought the presidential election. He paid mafia figures in Chicago to get dead people to vote, sometimes more than once. The only thing lacking is for Teddy to drink himself to death, and we can finally be done with them.
You had to be in the social/societal 31337 to even get close. JFK died over a decade before I, and many of you, were even born. I don't care. I don't feel chills when I see the footage of his horse drawn casket and see little "John John" saluting. It doesn't do a fscking thing for me.
On a local talk readio show this morning when I was driving in to work some 40-something host was wondering aloud if our generation would regard this "tragedy" they same way that his regarded the assassination of JFK. I say hell no! I'm not going to cry for JFK Jr. He was a spoiled rich kid who grew up and finally got himself in so much trouble that his family couldn't bail him out. This guy was also speculating about JFK Jr being president one day. WHAT?!?!?!?! He was a damned magazine publisher, not a politician! Are we to believe that JFK Jr inherited some grand ability to lead the country from a man who died before he even got to know him? Give me a break.
What is it about middle-aged white people that has them enchanted by "royalty" be it actual, percieved or even bestowed.
I cried when my father died. I cried when my mother died. I cried when my friends died. I cried when my relatives died. I'm not going to cry for some stranger, and I don't understand why anyone else does. Reality check time, YOU NEVER MET THEM. YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO MEET THEM. THEY DIDN'T KNOW THAT YOU EVEN EXISTED. THEY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
You're not children, stop the damned crying already.
LK
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
I never thought of it like this before.
You make a good point. It's more nostalgia that anything else which drove JFK Jr's celebrity status.
Either Way, I'm sick of hearing it.
LK
> Wasn't it Einstein who said something about the individual being smart and the masses being stupid?
Not sure about Einstein, but "J" said it in "Men In Black".
But it's interesting to compare and contrast how Katz talked about the Columbine incident here and how he did elsewhere, where he did a good job of parroting the party line about how much guns were responsible, etc... at the same time, he was taking a different attitude towards the gun situation here, and actually admitting that there were people on the other side of the issue that weren't raving loons (something the mainstream press doesn't do, and that he didn't do when discussing the accident in "mainstream press" mode rather than on slashdot) and trying to act like he wasn't pontificating, because he knows this is a different audience.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
So two questions:
Why are the UK media so obsessed with a minor celebrity that the majority of the UK public have never even heard of? (they did the same thing with that Simpson bloke)
How can anyone truly believe that the death of this guy can bear any comparison to the assasination of JFK?
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
This is the most I have heard of the JFKjr incident. The first news I heard concerning this was from some people joking on a hike. Of course, I still don't know how many people were wounded or killed outside the bus station when I left for the hike. Blood all along the street and all I can see are JFKjr headlines. I guess I continue to ignore media.
He was flying at night, in a haze, and he didn't have his instrument rating. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
News for Nerds....hah. This site has simply become news for nerds. stuff about linux.
The thing that angers me is reading all of these comments and seeing all the comments by angry geeks about how they hate the coverage on news blah blah blah. Our community comes off as insensitive and frequently caught in bickering amongst ourselves. Someone says they hate Linux and next thing you know they get 5,000 emails calling them a whole range of explitives. JFK jr. dies and they all say "Who cares? what supid OS will the amiga run?" Well i care. I dont think that someone who lived his life genereally as a very nice person should be disrespected because a media frenzy surrounded his death.
Heard on the radio yesterday that
JFK Jr. had said that he didn't know if he actually remembered his time in the white house as a small child or only thought he remembered because he had seen and heard so much about it.
It seems to me that technology isn't *replacing* media, or the goal of media -- it's simply allowing media to run unchecked in a way it hasn't been able to do before. Media as a whole, unlike some small-time pundits, has never given two whits for things like "truth" and "culture," or any of the other things people might be concerned with. When fashionable, lip service is paid, but the goal always has been to get readers.
Technology comes along and (arguably) gives the media a way to dress sensationalism respectably & convincingly, and it's no surprise that the media is running wild with it.
Sure, technology is involved. But I'd argue that it's only removed certain established checks & balances, to use an overused term. Maybe this will backlash, and the pendulum could swing the other way. Who knows.
Crap. Now that I've heard of him, I feel like I've lost a member of my family. I'm going to go buy some flowers and put them outside his Topeka home. He was America's archduke.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
The message I'm replying to should not have been moderated down -- it was both on-the-point and funny. I love the folks who either (a) claim to never watch TV, or (b) claim only to watch PBS when they're watching. Why aren't they turning up their noses about the Web, which is capable of being far as crass, mundane and mind-numbingly stupid than television?
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
The media has always been about supplying what the public wants to view, and this is something that is continued to this day. Many people I have talked to recently regarding the plane crash have taken the viewpoint that the media should show some modicum of responsibility for the content that it provides the public, rather than sensationalising that which they know will draw public attention.
A lot of people complain about the crap that is aired on the media and the lack of substantial content that is immediately relevant to our own lives, but do we really want the media telling us what is relevant to us? I am happy with things the way they are, I see nothing but fluff in the daily news each night, crowd drawing spectaculars of fire and noise and death, but I am happy feeling that this is not important to me, that instead of attempting to tell me what I should know, they are showing what they think people will watch. We are in the James Cameron era, where wonderful light and sound and camera angles emotional traps are commonplace and are the magic which the media uses to draw its crowds.
The media is the new cinema - watch it, listen to what it says, but don't allow them to tell you what is important.
I say I ain't giving you no tree fiddy you goddamned Loch Ness monster, get yo own goddamned money!
I would love to know how people can say that he was the "leader of the newest generation." I don't know where Katz got this quote from, but it's completely absurd. I hadn't paid more then two minutes' attention to JFK Jr. before his death, and have only paid more than that since then because of the media over-saturation of the event. So he died. Get over it! He's a fallible human being, like everyone else on Earth. If you've never met the man, or at least have been affected by him in some way, then there is really no reason for you to greive. I truly cannot understand how people get so emotionally involved over someone who they've never met. At least Princess Di was an incredibly benevolent person.
-- K
You have the source of her controversy:
A), Mother Teresa was Catholic, in a country of Hinduism and Islam.
B) She helped the poor, the "untermenschen", of Indian society. People who do this are by nature loathed by the System, the Man, etc. She basically was forcing the society to not ignore these people because, well, they were/are people. Anybody who does this tends to get the wrath of the rest of the community.
C), that you, and probably many others, disagreed with her religious beliefs, is also a source of controversy.
How did/do you feel about Rev. Hunthausen?
No, I don't need to know, but think about that, and the problems the American Catholics have in the eyes of the Pope in general...
Religion is as much about politics and social control as it is about faith.
...after I saw the first 1/2 hour on a CANADIAN news show dedicated to 'the tragedy'.
I predict that the media will burn out people's nostalgia for fake celebrities like JFK Jr. pretty darn quick. Of course there will always a core group of media consumers who will eagerly lap up people's news and tragedies...anybody who grew up in a small town will know that there were always gossips and the same faces that would show up at every funeral.
Let's not mistake the gloss of media attention for some new heightened reality. People remain being people, whether they get the news via TV and Internet, or over the back fence.
Somebody give this the moderation up that it deserves.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
How does a post get moderated "up" as flamebait?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Disregarding for the moment that Jerry Mander sounds like a 'nom de plume', is that the same guy who said that just the scanning of the raster onto the screen was, in and of itself, hypnotic, and for that reason alone it should be outlawed? (wonder what he'd have to say about computer monitors)
An interesting perspective on the effects of television is to be found in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "I Remember Babylon". It's well worth reading for anyone who watches television or lives on the same planet as those who do.
In his usual badly in need of an editor and proofreader way Katz has a few good points but I'd be curious to know if he tried to publish in George and got rejected.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've just moved to location where there is absolutely no telivision reception and I don't have enough free cash to pay the $40 for basic cable here. This is the first time since I was three that I have been deprived of TV. (Two whole months!) Without TV, the world seems brighter. The death of JFK jr. was an "oh well" for me. I dodged the over exposure that the media brings. My friends commenting that the only thing on TV was about JFKjr made me feel disconnected to reality, but then I realized that I wasn't really missing anything. My view on reality is becoming brighter. Almost the only input I get from the outside world is now from a peak of /. every now and then and perhaps KROQ's loveline at night.. So my reality is now that the majority of the population is technically oriented and sexually disfunctional!
Maybe I should've finished reading it but after two or three paragraphs I just couldn't take it anymore.
How is the ability to send images to television anything new? Or do you mean technology from 50 years ago is continuing to overwhelm journalism?
Grief is ritualized and globalized? Don't you think this is a little vague and unsubstantiated?
I think comparing JFK Jr. to Diana is a leap. I think that a lot of the grief is people reliving the death of a president and the realization of what that family has been through. Which is different than grieving for the death of a media figure.
Does techno-tragedy mean anything or are you actually trying to create new phrases?
No middle ground for civilized discourse. Has technology changed this somehow?
In a nutshell I disagree. The thing that is magnified most by technology is glamorization of technology.
Past few decades? Go back farther...
//
//Sure, she was trying to fight for human rights and all that other stuff, but what did she *really* do for the world?
So what exactly are you *really* doing for the world? We want our oxygen back troll.
Actually it proves the opposite.
Besides that really doesn't tie in to the 'American Dream'.
Unless you can be adopted by the royal family...
I think that charactizing the media as public servants is a idealistic (nice - but idealistic).
All of those commercial breaks should be telling us something.
And those JFK jr. comments are likely sarcasm alluding to the over-coverage.
It would be nice if we could all just take in the data and process it. However, this would take up to much time. We hope that the news people filter/package it and present it to us in a clean format but it's just not possible. They have to keep ratings up to keep selling those commercials. And they have to keep from upsetting the people who are buying commercials.
The conflict of interest is huge.
I don't have a TV temporarily and don't really miss it.
'The news is just stories about the same events happening to different people' -HDT
So, Katz, to prove you're really part of the real-world you had to write about John Boy's demise, but to prove that you're "superior" you had to write a critique of the coverage
FWIW you missed the real story, which is NOT that newer technologies provide more ways to saturate the world with pandering emotionalism, but that the alternate "news" technologies combine with a growing comtempt of mass media among the literate to render mass media "news"
ever less relevant. In consequence the mass media news providers, dependent upon their shrinking ever less skilled audience both financially and to sate the fat ego's that uniformly attire mass media "journalists", simultaneously more shrilly and pompously (if indirectly) assert their own importance while
pimping riper trash to a lower denominator with each passing day. The resulting circus is far more amusing than most of the fare proffered as
"news" - if you care to watch. I don't.
-- TWZ
Where I live, there is either cable or no TV reception at all. I've actually canceled cable and given up on TV. There are times that you miss certain shows, but that's when you get a friend to tape it (have VCR and TV still in apt). There are other times, like now, when you appreciate that you aren't being bombarded with all that crap.
It's a highly recommendable experience.
I frequently wish that it was possible to subscribe to cable only for particular shows.
(of course then they'd probably crank up the price of cable immensly.. pay per view shows... eek)
Still I live above an ISP, the net has taken alot of what used to be TV watching time, it's ethernetted right in.
Still, I think the thing that makes the big differance is that we don't just surf.. when we watch tv, on tape, it's something that we were wanting to watch, and nothing more.
Spend alot more time reading and working on things on the machine!
I recommend it.
Give it a try.
strangers who couldn't possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the principals in a far-off tragedy like this -are affected as grievously as family and friends.
This is the thing that scares me the most about our modern media-frenzied culture; I think the trend runs precisely contrary to Katz's idea here, that what what we are seeing is the cheapening of tragedy and suffering; people are being affected "as grievously as family and friends" not because they feel somehow connected to the incident, but becauyse they have become disconnected from those that should matter to them. We have cheapened mourning and made it a media event. We think a family's suffering is something to be gawked at. So what happens when a calamity hits home? Instead of learning about grief through personal grieving and relation with family and friends who are grieving, we learn about it mostly from watching others on the far side of a satellite disconnect.
Techno-tragedies are driven by images rather than judgement, significance, reasoning or content.
I fear that this is becoming the case in politics, family, religion, and education as well. It's just easiest to see in a media event, er, family tragedy like this one.
Duh! If you look at who wrote the Freedom Forum article, you will see the name: "Jon Katz"
Look before you leap.
DrDev
John,
it has *nothing* to do with technology. We got *exactly* the same in the sixties, though nowhere *near* so over the top. It's just gotten worse and worse over the years.
Funny, that's at the same time that media mergermania's been going on. About 10 years ago, Molly Ivins looked around, in a column, and noted that something like 90% of *ALL* the media in this country were owned by 29 corporations. You will recall that there have been mergers, since then.
The fact is, we have almost *no* "independant* media.
To the folks who criticise you by saying that folks must lap it up, since they publish want sells...wrong. They publish what they *want*. Welcome to the fact of a company town. Yes, I've argued with [Ll]ibertarians over the years, and their response has always been, "you don't like it, start your own, or leave". I don't see anyone competing right now. Got a gigabuck or two to spare, guys?
And then, of course, there's the point that if this occupies all the media space, then they don't have to cover anything else, like why we don't fully fund Head Start, or public education, or the space program, or the tax cut for the rich (that is, including the owners of the media).
Welcome to unbridled capitalism...and why it was bridled by our parents and rgandparents in the first place.
Someone once said; The Kennedys are the closest thing to a royal family the americans have. (or something similiar, anway..)
I'm sure many of you don't agree with that statement, but the fact is that many people need someone to look up to and admire.
Many americans have selected the Kennedys for this.
In Europe, we have a lot of royal families that people use for this, but we also have our differences between generations. Personally, I don't care much about the royal family in Norway, where I live, but many people actually do. I have a hard time understanding why people care so much, but that's the way it is.
It's the same thing with religion.
Wasn't it Einstein who said something about the individual being smart and the masses being stupid?
In it's heyday, if you wanted access to the largest corpus of human knowledge, you learned to read Greek. Today Java builds semantic bridges across wide gaps in computing semiotics. It is both portable and expressive...and thus impactful.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Now I'm bowing out of this; it's turning into a language holy war.
-=Maggie Leber=-
-=Maggie Leber=-
The media feeding frenzy that results whenever anything happens to anyone who has become note worthy is an over-reaction but its of little consequence except that other stuff not as "news worthy" loses out in the competition for ad space filler, uh, media coverage.
Is Linus Torvald worthy of our attention but JFK Jr. or Bill Gates are not? It depends on how interested you are (a situation that never lasts very long anyway.)
Ignore the hype and save some dough like I did. I avoided the entire Monica Lewinski debacle so totally that I wouldn't recodnize her in an elevator hawking her new "'Oval Office' brand" knee-pads and dress stain remover. (Okay, I didn't buy a news paper or watch TV news for almost a year to avoid the "star-f*cker".)
You only pay attention if you care and look else where if you don't. The ubiquity of the coverage may become a tad annoying but that's as much a reflection of your interest, or more precisely, lack there-of, as it is a reflection of the media's need for something to fill their pages with (regardless of the sentiments and level of interest of the producer's and editor's of the media pieces.)
Its too bad that the Kennedy/Bessettes crashed and sank but its not as important to me as it would be if *I* crashed and sank. Sad but there it is.
Propaganda isn't what it was when Lenie Rifenstal created "Triumph of the Will" because the media are no longer what it was back then: a tightly controlled mouth-piece for the powers that were or are. Media are now degenerate (I don't mean that in a pejorative way, just a factual one,) trivialized and specialized.
Don't perpetuate topics you don't care about by lamenting them.
-Charles-A.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Well I for one don't see technology changing the media at all. What new technique were they using in the coverage I didn't watch, Jon? Were there 3D recreations of the crash? Did they use personality analysis software to guess how JFK Sr would react to his son's death? Did they, in fact, do anything with technology that wasn't done previously in some form on television, or radio, or in print, or gossiping in the bathhouse? Maybe you're just overawed by this new fangled tee vee set what makes it look like you're really there.
And by the way, the image 'techno-media' conjures in my mind is of a reporter shouting to be heard over a pounding bassline with colored spotlights flashing in the background and club kids gyrating on Ecstasy. Maybe that's just me.
Using Microsoft software is like having unprotect sex.
Bite the hand.
So you mean to say that mass media isn't living up to the 'political good' set of assumptions we've been force-fed since America started up and Free Press was one of the issues on the table? BFD.
My first reaction when I saw JFK headlines screaming on cnn.com was that yet another Kennedy was shot, oh, boo-hoo. Could there ever be a more loathsome, rich, legally untouchable, hypocritical, boozing family on the face of this planet? If there is, please, shoot them too.
My second reaction was that someone or something really has it out for the Kennedys, and they deserve whatever they get.
I emerged from the womb the year before JFK was shot, and I have never had any feelings other than extreme distaste for that clan, and I wonder about the sanity of the people who wax nostalgic whenever yet another 'tragedy' happens to them.
Jon, where's your outrage about the USA-UK intelligence cabal that gets around the legal issue of wiretapping by sharing each other's data? You know, the deal about that spy tower in Northern England that wiretapped Irish communications for ten years, in a completely illegal fashion? There will be no reprisals, no arrests, and no change in government policy or intelligence activities, either across the pond or here at home in America. Now there is a technology story (or series, like your excellent work on the Columbine shootings and how geeks are social targets for bully-boy jocks) that Slashdot readers would love to froth about.
This article was a swing and a miss. Slashdot is about technology, paranoia, Linux, and hatred of Microsoft. Stick to the topic, sport. And keep writing.
So... what was the joke? The only one I've heard was that the last thing he said before he left was "you feed the cat, I'll feed the fishes".
Sorry. I didn't say it was a funny joke...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
NPR is just as bad as large corporate news as far as content goes. Every year their content gets more and more like the major news outlets and every year I hear more and longer plugs for businesses that "gave" them money. I
Sure, they might be religious wackos, but they're not corporate sellouts. Actually, today they have an article about this same topic: How people think of media figures as their "friends." Scary, I think.
True to form, Katz, the technological determinist, pins the blame for the media feeding frenzy on technology and not on institutions. Considering that the media industry is ever and increasingly driven by cutthroat competition for every little vanishing sliver of the audience's attention, it's hardly surprising that this sad but basically marginal story turned into a week-long weepfest. The death of a Diana or a JFK Junior offers the corporate media an irresistible opportunity to be at once sanctimonious and shameless, their favourite combination. This is especially true of the U.S. media, but it's an increasingly global phenomenon thanks to barons like Rupert Murdoch.
The desperation at every level to find some angle, any angle at all, leads to ludicrous extremes. In a week when China and Taiwan are inching ever closer to war, Time magazine devotes 36 pages to a full-colour obituary. On Entertainment Tonight, the cast of The Practice wax eloquent on the meaning of it all. And, silliest of all, a local news program's "high tech" analysis of the plane crash the other night turns out to be pointing a video camera at a computer screen running Microsoft Flight Simulator!
The frenzy will die out, as they all do, but the problem will remain. If we really want to improve the situation, we need to start by fixing responsibility where it belongs: not on all the shiny hardware, but on the people who make the decisions, and maybe on the corporate media's whole way of doing business. It's only going to get worse from here.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
That would be good in theory, but the truth is, with few exceptions, the news is broadcast to us by commercial entities. A newspaper, tv news station, radio or news web site relies on sensationalism to sell product. If they didn't report on what they thought their readers were itching to know about, they would loose customers. The value of the internet is that there are a lot more web sites out there which are relatively cheap to operate yet can deliver surprisingly well written news stories about whatever genre it is they cover (eg, slashdot). When a newpaper company must pay for every copy of the paper it manufactures which is outdated in 1 day, it must try to capture as large an audience as possible.
Though, i disagree with Katz on the idea that this is some revolutionary change brought about by the internet. I have the fortune of having many old pre/during/and post WWII Times magazines from my grandfather. It seems that the news is more tainted in those than today's news. I read about internment camps during WWII in the US in my Civics class in high school, one of the most incorrect and unjustified things America did in WWII. But to read the old Times article about them, you would think that they were resorts and only the bad Oriental Americans were put there.
To sum up, the biggest difference between news 40 to 50 years ago and news today is that technology, not neccesarily the internet (e.g. satellite feeds, cell phones, instant communication, email) allows for a much more violent, accurate, and awefull view of the world. News today is just as sensationalistic as before, but it is crammed down our throats and jammed in our ears until we can't stand to hear one more thing about it. The one thing the news has created for us today is a lack of heros, morals, and things to believe in.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
I think the strongest point touched on in this article is the misplacement of "hero" status. The other day on the news, I saw a story of a kid who got in a terrible accident, but survived and is recovering nicely. He was deemed a "hero". Now, it seems to me that surviving an accident, no matter how tragic, has NOTHING AT ALL to do with being a hero. It has to do with the most basic of instincts, that of survival. Overcoming personal tragedy is a triumph, helping someone else, or the world at large to overcome tragedy with little or no sense of self begins to approach heroism. And death at a young age of an unrelated accident in no way gives someone hero status in my book.
As far as generational icons go, this is a label generally misplaced, as it is often imposed by the previous generation. However, there are situations where it is completely appropriate. One must first remember that not all members of a generation are the same before accepting this point. Perhaps a more appropriate term is "subculture icons". Look at it this way: Many of the readers on this site look up to and iconify Linus Torvalds for his contributions to the Linux/Open source community, and for his ideals on software copyrights. Nothing wrong with that. Of course, if the media was to refer to him as a "generational icon", half the world would say "What the hell does some geek have to do with my generation? This is ridiculous". The same goes for many of the individuals that we refer to as "irrelevant" to our lives. I'm not saying that JFK Jr. is a prime example, but perhaps a large subculture of our society feels that he was a person to look up to. I can't argue that, from what I know of him, he was a well-spoken, affable man. Personally, I think a reasonable icon for my subculture would be Mr. Bill Gates. I realize I'm inviting flames here, but the point is, a ton of us look at him and say "Look at that, I could do that." Thus the start-up craze. I'm not saying we necessarily agree with all of the business practices of Microsoft Corp, or even Mr Gates himself, but I know there are an awful lot of people who would like to realize that kind of success coming from what began as a relatively small operation, and having that kind of societal influence.
I'm not really sure of what my point is here, except maybe that we should all choose our own heros and icons, and accept other people's choices as well. Maybe that kid who got in the accident is a hero for some, and if that helps make their lives better, I suppose, so be it. (yeah, yeah, so I contradict myself...that's what happens when rational thinking overtakes a rant....doesn't make any of it wrong...)
Good post.
To sum up, there are no major revelations in Katz' piece, and the stuff he is talking about has been going on for decades if not centuries.
Rehashes of the bleeding obvious tinged with sixties-style idealistic longing for things that will never happen do not suddenly become insightful journalism because you add the buzzwords "technology" and "internet".
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
login. set your thresholds to -1, and hit "do not
display scores." uncheck "willing to moderate."
this is the only way to read slashdot. i am
totally unwilling to let people i don't know judge
posts i haven't read to determine whether they're
appropriate for my own consumption.
i can make that decision on my own, thankyouverymuch.
I agree with what nearly all of what you said. I listen to a lot of conservative talk shows and I here a lot of good points brought up on this topic.
Through technology the media is striving to entertain its audience with the tragic stories they report. They realize that if they get do more than just report, but show gory images, high tech graphics, interview overly emotional people, etc that they will have a much larger viewing audience. They ultimately attempt make the viewer feel that he/she is a part of the story.
This causes a problem when the media by itself has the power to choose what news you are to be interested. It also causes others to try to redirect the media attention to themselves. Why did the WhiteHouse announce the finding of JFK jr.'s body? Did they conduct the search? Are they directly related to the incident in any way? No, Bill just want some attention.
Even worse than that is media ability to create idols or gods. This scares me. I am a christian and know quite well the warnings in Revelation. In no other time period has it been possible for a person to gain fame instantly. I didn't even know what JFK jr looked like until this weekend and yet he is supposed to be the bright flower of my generation? What I'm getting to is that the anti-christ will be able to use technology to become a god. He will use the media to make him famous even worshiped overnight.
Because of this I find technology entrigueing and frightening at the same time.
Just thought I'd share my views.
-Al-
It must be "News for Nerds" w/ all these comments.
Besides I liked it. I found it more to be an article about the media and technology more than an article about jfkjr.
-Al-
It has everything to do with technology. The purpose of the article is to show that technology is being misused by the media. Plus, how can you say it's not about technology if the media that is decribed could not exist w/o the technology.
I have little respect for anybody who idolizes celebrities. They just prove that they think celebrities are better people then them.
-Al-
The news media has turnned from providing information to entertainment. It's not about news anymore but about selling... /. and you'll see a lot of it.
/. :) pritty sad hu
There is plenty of real news going on. Read
Instead they want to talk about famous people who died becouse it sells.
The news has gone tabloid and now I get my news from
I don't actually exist.
Jerry Mander analyzed this effect of television (among other) over twenty years ago, in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television . It's still very relevant today; I would urge anyone who's concerned about the negative effects of media to read this book.
To paraphrase Mander, he argues that television is a noisy channel (in the information-theoretic sense) with certain bandpass characteristics. (Mander doesn't phrase it that way, he's a former advertising executive, not an engineer.) Crap passes through relatively unperturbed by the channel, while quality suffers an impedance mismatch and suffers enough noise and/or attenuation that it doesn't stand much of a chance.
"We have become a country of restless, shallow people accustomed to being entertained every moment of each day." ---Michael Medved, Film Critic
I was born in '63 (June), so I don't directly recall his father's death, or the historic "salute".
However, I found myself this week grieving JFK Jr.'s death more than I thought I should, and I couldn't figure out why until I read this article.
Certainly I feel a certain sadness for his family's loss. But, aside from he being the first really "famous" person from my generation, I had almost no inate connection to him or his politics or life's aspirations until his death. I never read George.
But still, I could not put my finger on why I felt so badly about his death, until it struck me after reading this: I get those pangs of grief whenever I see one of those techno-images: John-John saluting his father's casket is probably the most powerful one. But I think it's even been brought out that he didn't even remember those times, only through people telling him about it later.
What bothers me the most about it, in retrospect, is that I no longer have any control over it. The media pushes these powerful images into my field of vision in very pervasive ways. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not one of those "Aliens are transmitting secret messages into my brain" kooks. But what bothers me is, even if I turned off my computer and T.V., there were even billboards around Chicagoloand advertising one paper's or another T.V. New Network's coverage of the "tragedy." News stands between here and work had placards in big letters shouting "JFK, Jr. -- 1960 - 1999" There was no escaping this media event.
I'm not suggesting that we all become nutty kooks denouncing media and boycotting this and that. But I think that we need to take a very hard look at what we allow ourselves to be sucked into. In retrospect, I have no more reason to feel worse about JFK Jr.'s death than anyone else in the public eye. It's just how the media has presented it that has made my experience of it different.
And, I realize now that if I don't want to be manipulated, I'm going to need to get my head clear and figure out what I'm going to do about it.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I felt some emotion about this incident. Mainly because I can remember all the way back to JFK getting shot, presidents getting murdered tends to be upsetting to kids, and remember the other calameties of this family.
But I barely knew this kid existed, didn't follow the TV, didn't check it on the web. Was those past memories coming back. No big deal.
I'm insulated by living in Thailand, which does my perspective on affairs American lots of good, and it didn't get much coverage. Katz has some interesting things to say but he tends to assume the world revolves around the US. :-)
Turns out not to be the case.
Just another perl hacker in Bangkok
What? The moral leader of a generation? The inspiration for young America? What are these people talking about? JFK2 was a nice guy, a rich guy, and if you believe People, a good looking guy. But to make him into some kind of hero is nuts. Maybe I am too young to be part of this generation that supposedly idolized jfk, but I've never heard anybody ever say he was their idol. Moral leadership? He was just some guy who had a famous name and some money and wanted to be left alone and be recognized as more than just his father's son. A great guy, I'm sure, but he was nobody's hero.
Maybe I am just too young to see what the big deal is with all this kennedy stuff. I mean, Jackie was pretty hot in her day, and JFK was the president, and he got assassinated, and he was young, and then there are all the other relatives in politics; but I never understood this whole "Camelot" notion that people tried to push. I mean, they were just rich. I guess these days that's all that the British royalty are, but still, Camelot Schmamelot. Everyone tries to make it out like they are all the perfect Americans or something and I really don't see how the Kennedys are any different from any other rich family, except that they've got a lot of family members in politics.
These people saying that JFK was some kind of moral figure or idol are really crazy. Like, certifiably insane, as far as I'm concerned. He was really just some guy. Maybe they are remembering that kid saluting the casket or something, but even then, he's just a kid, not some kind of superhuman figure.
As for this:
How utterly dumb. When JFK was assassinated, it was the leader of the free world killed by a maniac in an era of Soviets and Nuclear fear. That was also 35 years ago (+/-). This is not the president of the United States we are talking about today. This is his son. And he seems to have done his best to distance himself from his father's image. The fate of the free world is not resting on his shoulders, and is not thrown into doubt because of his death. He was, in fact, "just some guy." Imagine for a second that Hinckley had succeeded and Reagan had been killed (I will restrain my Reagan comments for the moment). Yeah yeah yeah, the entire course of history would have been changed, but let's just say that it was his daughter that had died last week. Do you think there would be such an outpouring of "grief," as it seems to be called now? Would Patti Davis be "The moral leader of her generation," the "inspiration to all the young americans"? No, of course not, and neither should Kennedy.
CNN had a poll on their site, something to the effect of "Media coverage of JFK's death has been: A) Excessive B) Adequate C) Not enough," and about 80% said Excessive. CNN's top story, every day since then, has still been JFK. I mean, the families have already started to move on. Do we really need minute by minute coverage of his mass? What morons are running the show around here that think people actually care? Or, more to the point, who are the morons that really do care? He's gone. He was a nice guy. Idol? No. Moral Leader? No. We should all just be glad it wasn't our kid. There are much worse things to cry over than this. Deal.
rooooar
No offense to Katz, but we always have been on our own. Only in the early days of Usenet was the signal to noise ratio high enough that killfiles were only necessary on the really high volume groups.
The point of Free Press is that ALL the ideas can get out there. It is up to you and me to figure out which ideas are worth hacking on and which are in the realm of bovine scatology (thanks, Norm). Journalism thinks it has this gatekeeper function... it does not. The fact that it thinks it does means I no longer get my news from corporate entities based on this continent.
Yes, it's annoying when the Big Boys interrupt the ballgame to tell us that they haven't found John-John yet. Waste a few sheets of paper and write a formal protest and maybe they won't do it next time. (Sending email isn't enough; they're not required to keep it for the station logs for their FCC review. They are required to keep snailmail.) But other than that, vote with your feet for your news.
I read Neal Boortz, a noted Libertarian talk show host who always has pointers to the political outrage(s)-du-jour,
In short, stop whining, and vote with your feet.
(Kudos to Taco, this is the FIRST John-John story I've seen on
I have a friend who attends the Coast Guard academy right now and he dropped me a few ideas of what would have happened if one of us had gone down.
The CG would have taken a ship or two, ran zig zag patterns for 24 hours and if you had not been found? Well you would have been categorized lost at sea and be swimming with the fish. No 8 CG ships and no Navy destroyer with massive amounts of divers. No, no great tragedy for you justa stat.
Hangtime
Think about it. Kennedy was flying recklessly at night beyond his capabilities. The three tookoff later in evening when he knew he couldnt fly instruments endangering the lives (and abruptly ending them)of his passengers. Sue the JFK Jr estate for all its worth including insurance. If OJ can be made to pay for wrongful death even after skipping the criminal charges, JFK Jr could certainly end up paying as well.
Hangtime
[subject - 'nuff said]
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is all about againg baby boomers falling over each other with nostalgia and a genereal refusal to accept that time only moves in one direction. the real tragedy is that all the fat ageing boomers are so fixated on what was once an icon of their youth, not mine. Im 22 and could care less about spending over a million to pull a reckless kennedy out of the ocean, just to drop him back in. Im tired of watching useless celebrities cannonized upon their death. he never effected me. his claim to fame was his father. im going to stop now before i start foaming at the mouth...
go buy beos 4.5
You just randomly sprinkled the word "technology" in there so you'd have an excuse to write about Kennedy and Celebrity worship.
This isn't news for nerds, it doesn't matter, and reading it was like swimming in quicksand.
Please stop inventing things to write about, lately you features have seemed to be non-events.
Then again, maybe I just don't quite get it.
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
This is Microsoft Visual History 4.0, man!
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Don't forget that MSNBC's debut was coverage of TWA 800. They established their habits early.
That's generally good advice, IMHO, but this time they were nearly as bad as the rest of them. NPR devoted 20 minutes, a full one-third, of their Saturday program All Things Considered to coverage of the JFK, Jr. story. At this point there really was nothing of substance to report other than the plane is missing and rescue teams are searching for it. But they went on and on. A lengthy phone interview with a search and resuce spokesman detailing the number and types of craft involved in the rescue operation. A retrospective on the Kennedy family through history. A lengthy excerpt of the remarks JFK, Jr. made at his mother's funeral. And on and on...
To blunt my criticism, I'll confess that Saturday was a rather slow news day. Another 20 minutes of the program was dedicated to a feature story on communities whose economy is based on the timber industry. But it's normal for NPR to provide deep coverage of "smaller" stories. It's not as normal for them to follow the hype of the Techno-tragedy events. I was disappointed in them.
I'm just as tired of pundits bemoaning the manipulative capabilities of the "media" as I am of the "media" itself. If you don't like it, turn the damn thing off! Change the channel. Get your news online. Feeling manipulated? Then stop allowing it. Climb a little higher up Maslow's proverbial pyramid and stop being a victim. Most of humanity, it seems, needs to be led. As long as this is true, we will always have "media" and manipulation, techno-memes notwithstanding.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Aurther C. Clarke
On CNN, a friend of the Kennedy family said on
Tuesday that Kennedy "was the icon, the
moral leader for the next generation of young Americans."
Who is this friend claiming that Kennedy is my
moral leader?? I'm actually quite offended that
people say stuff like this. I don't think that I
had heard (or cared about hearing) of JFK Jr. for
several _years_ before his death.
All this media attention and interviews give the
whole affair a sense of fakeness. Who really believes
that without JFK Jr. that the younger generation
won't have a moral leader. Come on...
Just my $0.02
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Including by yourself and your "can't let it rest" series on the subject.
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I am too young at 25 to have known the problems that the Kennedys have faced in full without reading about them. I do understand, however, why so many people are heartbroken over the death of JFK Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law. The Kennedy clan is regarded by many as a form of royalty in our country, whether we will admit to it or not. True, the media in charge of presenting us the information is from the last generation. But humanity places all the hopes and responsibility on the shoulders of the next generation. JFK Jr. was that next generation of Kennedy.
He knew that he didn't want to fulfill the destiny of being an elected official at this time. Maybe in time he would have become a high ranking public official. When you have a famous family that tends toward one area it is sort of expected that you will follow in those footsteps. JFK Jr. did do some of that. He became a lawyer. But he failed the bar twice. After a short law career, he decided he wanted to do something different. That was when he started George. Maybe his celebrity sold the magazine better than the content, but you can't separate the man from the legends around him in our society.
Please don't light up the barbeque because I see a point to Katz piece. I believe he is trying to point out what has become of the rites of passage in our lives as a result of media and technology. Everyone wants to be first in demonstrating they have better knowledge. And our celebrities, especially the ones that are "young and attractive," are placed in a higher regard than those that perhaps deserve fame for their efforts over time.
JFK Jr. was a good person who learned to handle his fame well. He didn't act like he was owed anything. He didn't blame other people when things didn't go his way, as near as I can tell. I didn't know him, and maybe he could have been a great person in the political arenas, but we can never know that. Their time with us was good and they have travelled on. Leave it at that. Speculation to either side doesn't do anyone any good.
I'll never be as good as I want to be. I can only be as good as I am.
As some people have already posted, you can't avoid the mass media without also cutting off a lot of information.
So whats stopping people from filtering out the useful information from the repeated-for-the-37-millionth-time-today information?
Geesh, Kennedy fscked up, and he, and the people who were with him died. It happens every day. Get over it.
When you start believing that he isn't "just another person on this planet," then you are immediately placing him in higher regard than yourself. A person is a person; no more, no less.
.AsmodeusB
... historically speaking. Journalism has been sensationalist since before the invention of the high speed printing press. Hasn't John Katz heard about:
The early London tabloids?
The controversy surrounding the sinking of the Main?
Crime reporting during prohibition?
The always irresponsible reporting of high profile murder cases? (And I'm not talking OJ)
As a writer, you'd think he would have a little more perspective on the history of his profession.
Hate to say this, but this article is pratically the same (it may be exactly the same, but I'm not about to perform a byte-by-byte comparison) as the one at The Freedom Forum (one of those first-amendment-only freedom sites, from what I can tell).
Actually, on reading it I notice that there are a few minor differences. Can't Katz put out some original work?
That said, neither article was particularly ground-breaking. I learned nothing and my interest failed to be sparked. The articles are rehashes of facts. What they need is an analysis of said facts. That's the problem with much of Katz's writing: it lacks analysis. If I want facts, I can go to the encyclopædia.
Why did he die ? Poor judgement, simple as that. Sound familiar ?
I'm not a pilot but I once heard one say that he had a small weight dangling from a string above his dashboard, so that when the plane was level it was directly over a poker chip taped to the top of the dash. Prevents disorientation, he said. And hard to ignore.
re TV, there are a few good things broadcast. Like Nova, and how could I live without my nightly Jeopardy fix ? I just choke back my gorge during the car and prescription drug ads. They seem to have the most money to buy those ultra-high-priced spots. NPR is my main source of news, though.
I'm not here to criticize Katz. Doesn't doing so make you a meta-media-critic ? Your mental processes must be a rats nest of spaghetti code.
Katzie your treatment of technology as some sort of god sickens me, though perhaps its appropriate in a forum with so many techno nerds with their heads stuck firmly up their rectums.
You don't need computers to inflate a story beyond its true meaning. Recall when the U.S. Battleship Maine exploded. Having actually been a powder explosion in the magazine, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon, blamed it on the spaniards, inflating the actual story beyond all recognition. At one point he actually told his reporters that he would 'supply the war'.
The result was the Spanish-American war.
Katz, you suck.
Tragic, story, deserves its share of coverage, but to preempt Style with Elsa Klensch for this is just wrong.
.^
^.
( @ )
These two situations are quite different.
There is a problem present when a couple guys maliciously take out a some innocent people as opposed to when an accident (like a plane crash) occurs. The end result is similar, but the causes are night-and-day different.
That said, I do agree with you that Jon's being a bit hypocritical in denouncing media hysteria having participated substantially himself.
Point taken... I think I'm just equating long-windedness with milking. :)
Oh John-John, where have you gone?
{Deep below the sea - I saw it on TV}
Now get your head out of your behind......
Turn OFF the TV & Turn ON your MinD
Basically I see it like this:
If you want to get Information or want to learn then plug into the net, hack, etc
If you want Entertainment (all "News" included) turn on the tube...
Jon Katz, just give the facts? Ha.
Katz will be Katz, and Katz will have fun
Katz will write articles that are way too long
Katz will be Katz, that's the way to do it!
Katz will be Katz, and Katz will bullshit.
(apologies to Timbuk3)
- Unplug television from wall outlet.
- Place wire clippers in preferred hand.
- Firmly grasp power cord in other hand.
- Clip the plug from the cord.
Your television has now been restored to its best possible operating condition.-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Oh my god! They killed Kennedy!! You bastards!
When will people learn that when journalists and other media types supposedly "check themselves" and question the validity and relevance of their subject matter, they're just practicing appeasement and perpetuating their own sily system of "free press"? More importantly, when will people learn that the media get away with this because we let them? C'mon folks.
Somehow, I doubt I'll be quoted on the news, since my generation (I'm 36) is supposed to be worshipping 'the Prince of our generation', not dead moonwalkers.
Earl
Is that like, what the song "When Robots Cry" (Sung by "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince"(!))
is about? I guess it's like, possible that JFK Jr, was a robot, but then, couldn't he just be, like, repaired or something?
Seriously though, if your coverage of the Kennedy "Tragedy" (Digression: Why is this tragic? Who here *knew* JFK, JR? Not me. I'll get upset when my parents start exploding.)consists of complaints about the other coverage, it's still coverage. Post-modernism can't save you know. Besides, this was all stated in a clearer (and shorter(!)) fashion in a "This Modern World" strip (whose URL I'm too lazy to dig up. It's at Salon.com) after the Littleton "tragedy".
In the words of the immortal P. Opus "No. Go away you Vultures". Take that, J.K.
*whew*
"Proofreading is for wimps"
-nme!
wasn't he some american guy killed in the 60's?
why do people bother watching tv?
live life instead of watching it like a spectator.
It has nothing to do with technology. This is a culture-related phenomenon -- like anything else, there is some tangential relationship to technology, but at its core, it's totally unrelated. If you want to criticize hero-worship, go ahead -- that's a valid target. But don't blame it on technology.
This article is as much fluff as anything else. Let's face it, the "declining quality of American public schools" is worthy of DISCUSSION, but it doesn't belong on the nightly news, since it's not an event. And while I didn't idolize JFK Jr. (I'm 22), I understand why my parents' generation did. He represented what they saw themselves as: a generation that was losing touch with its past.
Besides, how is Mother Teresa controversial? I'm not Catholic, and don't agree with most of her religious beliefs, but there's no denying that she did incredible work for the poor, and at great personal cost.
Katz is once again spouting a bunch of technobabble media buzzword nonsense, wanting everyone to denounce human nature (yes, hero-worship and Campbellian myths are ingrained in our basic makeup). Face it, Katz, you just need to have your name out there, don't you? Even if it means writing total nonsense.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I think the aftermath of this accident reflects on the values of our culture: good looks and money. Would there be such widespread interest in this accident if JFK Jr. and his wife weren't such a glamorous couple? Same thing when Diana Spencer died -- Mother Theresa died around the same time and apparently Diana's death was far more "newsworthy".
The evidence right now suggests JFK Jr.'s inexperience and poor judgement caused that accident. Getting killed by your own poor judgement is bad enough -- taking others with you is far worse.
Of course it's sad, but I'm not going through a "grieving process" either because I didn't know these people. It's sad that the deaths of many truly great people go largely unnoticed, but people can't seem to grieve enough over this.
It's Saturday, and MSNBC is continuting with day 8 of their round-the-clock coverage of... well, noone's really sure anymore. Flipping between channels, all I'm seeing on MSNBC is yesterday's(?) services for JFK Jr., 30 year old footage of RFK's funeral, and some other stuff in between. Meanwhile, CNN has gotten over it already, reminding us that things are still happening in Kosovo, the Middle East, and then there's that whole first-female-commander-of-the-space-shuttle thing that was supposed to be a big media event (not that the whole idea of a "big media event" isn't a problem anyway. oh well.) Personally, I don't think I've ever considered MSNBC to be real news. Maybe it's the whole "MS" part of it... ;-)
;-)
Of course, I haven't been wasting my time watching cable news... I was watching MST3k. And now the Where Are They Now marathon on VH1. I really should find something to do...
...blow up your tv... - not sure where that came from, but it's appropriate...
--- this comment is presented in WIDE SCREEN STEREO!!!
His father must be heartbroken! To win the Presidency and suffer a tragedy like this ...
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Hm. I do believe the series of features on Columbine were in protest of the effect of the techno-milking, not in participation therewith.
"like Mussolini, and Kennedy
I'm the Cult of Personality"
The connection to technology is just as he said: that now we're getting this drama on 5 channels (or more?) 24/7, in bright colors and choreographed by people whose goal is to make you feel--and keep watching.
Media hasn't always been able to do this; sensationalist headlines were not instantaneous, and tended not to move. True, they've always been designed to make you want to buy or watch (even if they have to override logic with emotion to do so), but now the medium is much more powerful.
Loosely abstracted, the article claims that for forty-somethings JFK was the embodyment of all their generation's hopes and dreams for a better America. (Never mind that the reality of the Kennedy administration didn't really live up to those expectations; it's the perception that counts.) When JFK and RFK were assassinated, many people transferred their hopes onto the rest of the family. Apparently, a lot of people honest-to-God, no-lie, really expected JFKjr to come riding in on a white horse some day and rescue those dreams.
For twenty-somethings, however, they found that there was no visceral connection with the "Kennedy mystique." Our generation was much more likely to view JFKjr as an unremarkable media figure whose untimely death was sad, but not a national tragedy.
So, it's not surprising that the news media tended to cater to the older generation's viewpoint. Not only do forty-somethings compose a big segment of their audience, a lot of the media decision-makers are themselves of that generation. Given a story that resonates with them personally and with a huge segement of their audience, it's almost a given that the result would be the media orgy that we saw.
-r
Even without the proper training - I mean, couldn't he look at his instruments, and realize that his artificial horizon was either up/down/leaning too far left/right - and also look at the altimiter, and see if he was gaining altitude or decending too rapidly?
I can understand panicking, and not realizing what is sky or ground, but I would think that you would at least know what instruments are what enough (the artificial horizon and altimeter both are pretty generic looking from plane to plane) to keep from hitting the water: go into a very gentle climb, perhaps in a circle - then radio for help (because you are stuck in the fog)...
Still, none of this excuses flying in such weather or at such time without the proper amount of experience...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A very well-written article, as usual. This is not a new trend either. There are, however, a couple of other examples of such "Techno-journalism" running rampant. First of all, the whole Gianni Versace murder case stands out as an example. I remember at the time that a lot of the media coverage amounted to hysteria. At the time, people seemed to lionize Versace as some sort of Can't-do-wrong superhuman. One news report even stated that "He will never be forgotten." Gianni who?
Another example of this is the type of journalism used by Northwest Cable News, the regional 24-our news channel that covers Washington, Oregon and Idaho. It seems that the slightest little tidbit they can get their hands on becomes a major catastrophe. Not necessarily a single person (they tend to follow along with the rest of the media on issues such as the JFK Jr. case) but just the slightest little story, they'll spend hours on "exclusive coverage" and try and pry out every little detail they can.
Must be a slow news existence, huh?
-=>W=-
Windows is not a virus. Viruses actually do something.
When I've been in front of the tv over the last few days, I just treat it the same way I did when Princess Di kicked the bucket - I watch only the channels that don't even mention the event, (SciFi, Comedy Central, Cartoon network, Nickelodeon, HBO, etc.).
In fact, my whole attitude towards the death of JFK jr. has been exactly the same as it was towards Di... without even actually consciously thinking about it, I ask myself, "Is this someone I either know or care about? No, it isn't." Then I consciously decide to avoid all the coverage and hype in the media.
Frankly I don't give a rat's ass about the death of either of these people and I have a very hard time understanding why so many people outside of the friends and family of the deceased seem to care.
Guess what - neither John John or Lady Di would give a shit if *you* died...
JFK Jr died? How come no one tells me these things?
There's also the small matter of MT going in to help the poor in areas where "population explosion" is a meaningful phrase, while steadfastly maintaining that birth control Is A Sin.
Things like that. I can understand why it would be "controversial" to continue to apply what is essentially a band-aid solution to the problem, even if it is at great personal cost.
*shrug*
For that matter, some of the Catholic saints are not-so-saintly when you THINK about what they did. And the whole "virgin martyr" thing is ridiculous -- if a girl jumped out of a window to avoid being raped today, and died, we'd have sympathy but we wouldn't call her a martyr.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
[Disclaimer: I've got my own problems with the Columbine coverage, as those who read my earlier post on the thread are probably aware.]
First, in defense of JonKatz, he was covering an angle of the Columbine tragedy that a lot of people were trying very very hard to ignore.
Secondly, a hell of a lot more than three people died. Third, the perpetrators weren't already celebrities. Fourth, people like Diana Spencer and John F. Kennedy Jr. were only celebrities by marriage and birth respectively.
Over-reported stories about JFK Jr, Princess Di, JonBenet Ramsey, etc. are pure celebrity gossip disguised as news. Over-reported stories about Columbine, about cases like Matthew Shephard's murder, even about something like PanAm 103, are over-reported to draw attention to possible underlying causes of the specific over-reported tragedy.
It does get tiring, yes, and I do get sick of the "How could this have happened HERE?" but there is an underlying nobility of purpose that is just not present in reports of most celebrity deaths. Now, if something useful like MADD and SADD drumming up a lot of publicity after Princess Di's death had happened, that could have crossed the line back over. And there are cases that are a mixture of the two -- deaths of popular entertainers, especially musicians, due to drugs, DWI, or more recently, AIDS, sometimes are symbolized as an awareness of the problem. And this is a good thing.
The coverage of Columbine, especially with all the angles it eventually took, blew the lid off of a lot of problems. Endless coverage of celebrity deaths without much about the underlying cause is just a lot of mental masturbation.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
... you consider "computer" to be a necessary and therefore unstated modifier of "nerd."
There's a fair amount of "English nerds" (like me) on
The point Katz is trying to make, as I see it, is that over time, technology has made it increasingly easier to saturate the media with non-stories. Meanwhile, "stuff that matters" is getting ignored. THAT matters, in and of itself.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
This reminds me of Kurt Cobain's death. A group of students in my Mass Media and Popular Culture class were discussing it (this is right after it happened), and in comes our professor announcing to all and sundry that John Lennon's death was much more meaningful and that how sorry she felt for our generation because we didn't have that kind of hero.
Um, pardon me, but I like Lennon's music much better than Cobain's, anyhow. And Kurt Cobain ain't no cultural icon, folks -- he was arguably a talented musician (though not my style), but he was no hero of mine.
Freddie Mercury's death affected me much more, though he doesn't belong to "my" generation. Queen wasn't exactly popular here post-1981 except among Highlander fans, but because suddenly AIDS is this big trendy thing and is how Mercury died, we get silliness in the same music press that used to hate Queen about how they were kind of cool after all for inspiring Guns N Roses.
That was annoying, sure, but to have the same press (and this time, with the addition of non-music folks) falling all over itself praising Kurt Cobain, who if nothing else hadn't lived long enough to create as extensive a collection of music as Freddie Mercury had, was just ridiculous.
I don't see why it's so necessary to take snapshot "icons" of a generation, anyhow. It's not like they prove anything. Lucille Ball didn't represent my mother's family growing up.
And it's all very sweet to go on and on about Camelot and the end of the era of innocence, but what this ignores is that for many if not most people, the "innocence" had been lost long ago. My parents have stories from their days growing up about mentally ill family members that they had to "hide" from their friends, hard times due to strikes, being told "your parents don't love you because they won't send you to Catholic school," putting up with "dumb Polak" slurs despite being the class valedictorian, etc.
Camelot? Yeah, sure. But what about the masses outside the gates?
It's the same thing that (for me) made the Littleton coverage so damned annoying -- "How could this happen here, in our nice white upper-middle-class suburb? We're Nice People! We are the American Dream!"
Feh. America needs to stop dreaming and wake up. The "American Dream" has never once included everyone. At best, it creates isolated pockets of "haves" that promote the illusion that everyone's got it that good. *sigh*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Read "If this goes on..." by Robert A. Heinlein. It's a story which can be found in the book Revolt in 2100. It's about a revolution which occurs in America at the end of the coming century to overthrow the totalitarian theocracy which came into power in the beginning of the century. The theocracy is a massive propaganda machine which uses mass media to exert its influence over the populace. The rebels use this media to overthrow the government; at the time when the Prophet (dictatorial leader) is to perform his Miracle (a yearly televised event in which the Prophet is possessed by the First Prophet; founder of the theocracy) the rebels doctor the broadcast. The First Prophet takes over the body of the Prophet...and instructs the populace to rise up against the heretical government, who have blasphemed the true faith. This is followed by mass chaos as the devout (particularly those within the military) rise up against those in power...Perhaps not the anti-christ using technology to become a god (and definitely off-topic), but an excellent story of how reliance on and devotion to the media can be a double-edged sword.
However, I think I should point out that the obsession over tragedies, especially tragedies that somehow seem small and confined, is not a mere product of the Internet age. Yes, mass media makes it possible, but when the Hindenberg exploded over New Jersey, that was major big news. They were "lucky" enough to have a camera shooting there and the footage ended up in every newsreel and is still a common sight today if you watch the History Channel too much, like I do. And I don't believe there was even anyone "famous" on board, and the casualties were not that great.
One time when I was in high school, my chemistry teacher told the class that re-reading the text wasn't always the best way to study for a test, because your eyes/mind tend to gravitate toward the things you already know and understand more than the things you don't. Your brain tries to hook on to the small bits that are comprehensible. Our minds are, among other things, filled with pattern matches and defense mechanisms. We latch onto the crash of a plane with the son of a famous person on it sometimes because that's a small tragedy, something we can understand, something that probably won't even affect our lives in the long run, because we didn't know these people personally, and so it's over and done with in one sense, although not in the sense that the media is going to leave it alone. If we try to think about people starving to death all over the world, our brains try to make us stop, because there's nothing we can really do about it. It's always there. And if we become obsessed with that, there's something wrong in our heads, along the lines of depression. It's something that seems inescapable, because in some sense, it is.
Cripes, boys, the very fact that the 'tragedy' ended up on /. makes me ill. I do not watch tv because the media drives me nutso, and I come here this morning for a good dose of fact and insight and see that /. has been infected with this poop.
Really, what the hell does technology have to do with media? You could make the same argument for pr0n and technology, or pyramid schemes and technology... this is simply a twisting of viewpoints as an excuse to spout off.
And I myself have just added my voice to the din... Crap.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
As a 19 year old college student, I was more than a little surprised to discover that JFK Jr. "was the icon, the moral leader for the next generation of young Americans." I had obviously heard of him, it's kind of hard not to, and knew a bit about his life. However the very notion that he was a leader of his generation is perposterous. If he was such a leader he would have run for public office and gone into civil service. Instead only later in life did he even do anything, start a magazine, that was visible to the public. As far as being an inspiration, I hardly think so. His magazine has flopped miserably, with sales in the red for every year of its operation. I don't mean to say that he was not a nice man. He very well could be. However this is just another example of the hero and celebrity worship that occurs in the homes of many simple-minded Americans on a nightly basis. These are the people who watch Entertainment Tonight and A Current Affair religiously and follow the every nuance of the pathetic lives of Hollywood actors. Obvioiusly this makes good TV as thousands and millions do this, so the networks do not have much choice but to air coverage. The network execs say "Hey this gets great ratings, cancel the meaningful coverage of... Cover the JFK crash instead!" This topic was covered recently in this article. It is a terrible tragedy, but for all the people out there who need to "work out your grief." I ask you: Why? Just sit down and actually think before you embaress yourself further with pathetic shows of fake emotion.
If you just blatently call John Katz a moron and say that this whole thing is a load of horse shit, then you are going to get moderated down, write something critical and intelligent and you won't, and get a login name, maybe you can be a moderator too
Spyky
Media have been churning out these emotionally charged images for a long time now. You can reasonably argue (and many have) that the speed and efficacy of the electronic media has made a qualitiative difference, but really. Public discourse of all kinds has been rolling around in gossip and cras political manipulation since long before the printing press was invented.
;-)
A few years ago I came across a volume of speeches given before the Roman Senate (translated into English of course). Two things really struck me. One was that politics has not changed much in two thousand years. The other was that the average Roman senator seems to have been better educated than the average American. The speeches were clear, concise, well reasoned and generally appealed to facts rather than relying on unsubstantiated assertions.
Have you noticed that there are a lot of people on earth now, and that many them have nothing better to do than watch an awful lot of TV? And that some of them are, well... stupid?
One of the effects of technology is that columnists can fire off poorly thought out pieces & publish them on the web before their editor has a chance to see them.
So the outpouring of grief and concern is a result of large media outlets intensively covering an event that really is not that significant? And this is exacerbated by technology? And JFK Jr. was irrelevant to "this generation" because he didn't worship the internet? Am I getting the gist of what you're saying here?
For starters: mass media can manufacture stories and perspectives, but they can't manufacture meaning. There are two parties involved in meaning, the author and the reader. If the significance of something is lost on the reader, then it becomes insignificant. So if a large group of people did not find JFK Jr's death to be significant, there would be no shrines with flowers or declarations about a "black shroud" from that group. It is certainly possible for mass media to try to make it appear that "public opinion" or "public sentiment" leans in a particular direction, but it is not possible for mass media to implant emotions in people's psyches or to fundamentally change their views of themselves and the world, against their will.
Anyway I take it you watched and read a lot of the coverage, and it didn't brainwash you into an outpouring of grief. Are you saying that you and your friends/colleagues and vastly superior to the great unwashed out there, who are so feeble that they can be hypnotised into believing, against their will, that O.J., the Kennedys and the Super Bowl are more significant than the internet? Can you really despise the common folk that much? Is it just possible that this story continues to occupy so much media space all around the world because it is meaningful to quite a large group of people within the mass audience?
Technology does enable the mass media to circulate images more quickly and widely. But this does not seem to have changed the way in which stories unfold. In fact, the speed at which stories circulate the the public around the world is not all that faster now than it was after the first trans-oceanic cables were laid. Seriously. Now we get TV coverage potentially minutes or hours after a story breaks -- in those days a new edition of a newspaper could be on the streets within an hour or two, with major newspapers sometimes publishing several editions in a day (this is true within living memory).
Your rhetoric about the internet being the grandest accomplishment of some or another generation is something which you really should find embarrassing upon reflection. For starters, the internet is not the achievement of any particular "generation", it is the achievement of many people born at different times. And is it so significant that not devoting your efforts to it makes you a quaint anachronism? If a public figure in the 1880's didn't devote a large share of their life to the development of railroads, would you declare that they were out of step with their generation?
After wading through all the crap flame about the article in search for an intelligent comment about Katz's article, I realized the true horror of the situation. The television, which transmits data like any other medium, has become the "real-life" entertainment box... that is, the ambiguous "Industry" has realized that fictional entertainment doesn't sell as well as real-life stories. Of course, many people think this is sickening, so they turn to other sources for news.
Reading comments like "This is the first I've heard about this..." make me worry (although I think many of them must be lying... even Geeks in Space did that live report... brilliant) However, if this is true, it means most television, newspaper, and magizine media are forgetting that they are public servants.
The solution? It's what we all want (or what we all should want), but it's the most ambiguous part of all of this. Some say all we need is the data, and we'll process it ourselves. Others (like the modern newsmedia) process the data for us, and we react to their reports the way they want us to. One is cold and inhuman, the other seems warm and squishy but is vaugely totalitarian. Like most things in life, we need a balance. It's hard to define in words, but we need to be humane, remembering that the end result is the people that the data affects, and not the data itself.
I fully support the Kennedy family in making their funeral and reception CLOSED to the media. It's really too bad that the public eats this stuff up. See Nielson Homes.
Wah!
I'd like to focus on one statement in here, one that poked at the proverbial sore spot on my psyche that I've had for a long time. There's a line in this feature that reads:
I'd like to point something out that we generally tend to forget: Technology does not DO anything! Technology is a tool, all right? It's a plastic box, full of silicon and copper and solder, that's sits on my desk. Technology is a beige paperweight. Not until I make it do something that anything happens.
This continued anthropomorphism of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and electronic technology in general has become absurd. The wheel is technology, for goodness sake, but you don't see people ranting about how bad all the changes it generated were.
The feature is correct in part when pointed out that it's the people in charge of the networks/cable channels/webcasts/etc.. that had performed this deification of the victims, and that does all the intense focusing on seemingly (I don't know everyones tastes, so maybe you ARE interested in thong underwear and blue dresses?) unimportant issues for their entertainment (and hence, dollar) value. But remember, it's the people who made the decision to send the Channel Five helecopter after OJ's Bronco on the freeway, not the helicopter's.
Now, obviously, if the technology didn't exist, the oportunity for this kind of globalized infatuation wouldn't be possible. But, with any kind of technological advancement, there are going to be negative as well as positive impacts. To blame the technology used in these cases is about as practical as screaming at the TV for showing the 1000'th hour of some search boat floating off Martha's Vineyeard.
If you ever forget this, get a hammer. Look at the hammer. Remember that the hammer has done more for the advancement of humanity, and done more for the destruction of humanity, than our much lauded technology probably ever will. If that doesn't work, hit yourself over the head with the hammer. We'll web cast it for you!
the title says it all....Barf!!!! How much money diid we spend finding him anyway, and would ordinary citizens get the same treatment. NOOO!!
Get on with life, this guy killed himself, when he could have paid to have a instructor with him. He fought the earth, the earth won.
I think part of the phenomenon being discussed here has to do with the fact that the technology itself has modified the way that people in the more industrialized cultures communicate with one another.
The way we work, the way we socialize, the way we are organized has changed fairly rapidly when compared to past social changes. This is a value-free assessment; not that the technology is bad, just changing the way we as a culture share information.
One of the changes has to do with a set of shared references we use socially, a set of common reference points. When the culture was more local and regional, these were communicated verbally, person-to-person. If the most common way to communicate is through the electronic media, and the underlying principle of the people producing the media is to make $$ by satisfying cultural "needs," the result will be the sorts of over-communiated Masterpiece Tragedies we're seeing today.
Plus they distract us from more important things.
Vulgo enim dicitur, iucundi acti labores.
You do not fly at night if you only have the three hours of required IFR training under your belt. To do so is to tempt fate, bigtime. A famous old air show pilot named Duane Cole, who flew at air shows all around the US for decades, says never fly VFR at night. Call me crazy but I'd take his word for it.
When you fly at night, water looks like sky. You have to be nuts to fly over large bodies of water at night unless you have a LOT of IFR training. And that's WITHOUT taking the hazy conditions into consideration. I know hindsight is 20/20, but JFK Jr. took a completely unacceptable risk and paid for it. There's a reason other, more experienced pilots in his situation scrubbed their flights.
Why listen to the media at all? When have they truely had a clue as to what the general public really thinks. I have not seen either in print or on the TV a News subject where the media did not distort the facts and spin the information to make it more "gripping". My answer to the news media is to not buy, read, or watch news that I dont want to.... Go play Quake....escape the media blitz...live in a cave....
Media executives rarely make editorial judgements for the public good. On cable news
channels, tragedy - especially tragedy involving celebrity - greatly boosts ratings.
Ratings equal money. Cable channels like CNN and MSNBC depend on mega-stories for
audience and profitability.
FastCash is a bad drug. Newspapers have used the same tactics, still do too.
I have never seen "Public Good" in any form of Mass(for$)Media.
my2c
I'd have to agree with several of the earlier comments about Katz' article: the whole technology line was a little gratuitous. That said, I don't think his article was out of place on slashdot though. I think a number of readers, like myself, are "News Nerds" - curious and critical of the mediaspace and the power it wields.
He does make a few good points. The line between news and entertainment is becoming blurred. People enjoy being up with the latest gossip be it tech gossip, gossip about friends or gossip that gets fed to us via CRTs. It's human nature. News media plays off that need to be up to date- "Stay tuned for when we cross to...", "Next week's feature article is...", "Exclusive!", etc.
If you want to be entertained. Fine. Sit there and absorb. If you want information you will have to be a little more discerning. Use the remote. Hunt around for other points of view. Do some research. Talk to your friends and family.
I particularly like the last option. There's no way I keep up with every bit of news around the world. It's just not possible. Instead, I follow closely what interests me most. If I need to know about something outside my jurisdiction, say the political situation in East Timor, I ask friends of mine who I trust and feel are knowledgable in that area. The street goes both ways too - I'm happy to explain, as accurately and simply as I can, what I know about computers, music, maths, whatever. If I can't offer insight into something I'm asked about, "Sorry, I don't know" seems to work okay.
The trust is a little harder to establish but the idea carries over to the media as well. I have a small staple of trusted news services that I read, watch and compare. If there is conflicting information from any of these I turn elsewhere to get another point of view.
The first I heard about JFK Jr's death was via a rather tasteless e-mail joke that was going around. I'd heard the name JFK Jr before and someone out there thought that news of their death would be sufficiently virulent to spread succesfully. My "gossip-hunger" was piqued. I quickly hunted down some details and was sated. No need to have emotionally charged rhetoric on the topic added when I don't need it.
Bottom-line: Find trusted sources of information and use them when you feel the need, otherwise sit back and enjoy the show!
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
As far as I can tell, the overwhelming coverage of events like the death of JFK jr or Princess Di has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with television ratings.
The average tv news broadcast is fully a third commercial breaks. The competition for ratings must be pretty fierce in order to keep the advertisers. Thats why they tend to deal with the news thats provacative and exciting to the average person rather than informative or relavant. JFK jr and Princess Di were both symbols to a lot of people and the death of a symbol is big news. And the sad fact is that there are a lot of suckers out there who are sucked in by this type of news coverage. Like my mother for instance who watched CNN for a good many hours the first couple of days after the crash. It's obnoxious but it's what works for the networks.
I cut and pasted this editorial and forwarded it to some friends and my mother. Here is her reply. I think its pretty eloquent (Go Mom!):
"I read the column you sent earlier today and pretty much agree . . . certainly the coverage of the Kennedy tragedy has been WAY overdone by the press. I would guess, however, that the author of the article is closer to your age than mine. I was 20 when JFK was shot, remember clearly the events of that week, and the "wall to wall" coverage by the media (then only the 3 networks) then . . the first sustained visual coverage, ever, of an event. From that point onward, the government as a "good" force in the US seemed diminished - seems more so every year. Vietnam,Watergate, Monica, OJ justice, do-little congress, etc. Hence, perhaps those of us old enough to remember a time when being a US citizen was a badge of honor, the "Camelot" ideal, feel the tie broken with that time now that JFK Jr.(namesake of JFK) is dead. So perhaps the author, and you, should be a little more forgiving of the middle-aged media overplaying this event."
I have a solution that I think everyone will like. We should develope a web site that treats the members of the media just like they treat the people they report. Chase them around with cameras, Spy on them, Broadcast every juicy detail we can find. Even if it's just a shot of a journalist picking his/her nose in traffic.
Problem is the media hires plastic people with no personalities. They ad-lib the personalities in later, and it's usually done with such bad taste that even a blind person can tell.
The media tends to go where the money is, and not the news. If a 9 year old girl gets her PhD in Quantum Physics, they air the story after telling us who's sleeping with who in Hollywood. There is no judgement on what is really important: Which is us. The average Joe.
Another thing that I wish I could stop, is the media making up my mind for me. Everyday, it seems, I have some jerk telling me how I should feel about things that they report. I would like to hit that guy with my car so I can show him how I feel about him, personally.
In case you haven't figured this out already, I really hate the news. It's not the people that report it. It's their bosses that I hate. The owners of the networks I hate. They idiots that let coverage like this continue, instead of letting us decide whether or not JFK Jr. was really the man they made him to be.
As long as there are people in this world with no life of their own, we have to put up with this slop.
The worst thing about JFK Jr.'s death was that I missed 2 back to back re-runs of the Simpsons.
For that, I will never Watch the news again.
Tabloid journalism has overtaken the std media.
BTW: Does anyone besides me think we should stop electing Kennedys because the family has some problems with judgment/acknowledging limits?
Lew Glendenning
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
Sad as it is, the news from Martha's Vineyard ultimately says more about technology than it does about any individual people.
/. (i think /. is N.P.)].
On the contrary, it says something about each and every 'individual' in the American viewing public. Technology may be the medium by which we are force fed media drivvel, but the technology is run by profit hungry people for people seeking voyeuristic pleasure. You can't blame the murder on the gun.
The news media will continue to dole out eye-candy until we, the viewing public, stop begging like spoiled children to get it. I have become convinced that the drive for the highest profit will rule everything we see and hear unless more non-profit news organizations appear [like NPR, PBS, and
Until the media and its firm base of cathode-radiated zombies change, I suggest one good way to protest [and help your sanity], stop giving them money--either directly or indirectly.
KILL YOUR TV!!!!!!!!
[or exile it into PBS-land, but watch out for Mr. Rogers]
I stopped listening to "mainstream" media about 10 years ago. God help me, I get my news now from National Peoples (er) Public Radio and news lists like this one. Just give me the facts, I'll tell you how I feel
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
I think the short answer is that people are
fascinated with celebrities because these
celebrities appear in the media.
Suppose I own a magazine. Being a good
capitalist, I want to maximize the number of
issues that I sell. I don't think it's a big
leap to see that it's in my self-interest to
do everything I can to identify certain people
as inherently newsworthy and persuade my
readers that they should consume any material
related to these newsworthies. Whether this
newsworthiness is somehow defensible (in the
case of politicians, artists, technologists)
or not (pop musicians, glitterati) is immaterial.
So, if I can persuade you that JFKJ is a person
you should be interested in because he's
good-looking, rich and the son of a former
president, I can make more money. If throwing
in meaningless adjectives like "hero to a
generation" pumps the bottom line, so much the
better.
People end up caring about these media projections
because their peers do, because there are
billion-dollar companies trying to get them to
care and because it distracts them from their
lives (who of us has a life that can match the
non-stop excitement of that of a media-mediated
celebrity?).
SS
You can never be too rich, thin or cynical.
I think the short answer is that people are
fascinated with celebrities because these
celebrities appear in the media.
Suppose I own a magazine. Being a good
capitalist, I want to maximize the number of
issues that I sell. I don't think it's a big
leap to see that it's in my self-interest to
do everything I can to identify certain people
as inherently newsworthy and persuade my
readers that they should consume any material
related to these newsworthies. Whether this
newsworthiness is somehow defensible (in the
case of politicians, artists, technologists)
or not (pop musicians, glitterati) is immaterial.
So, if I can persuade you that JFKJ is a person
you should be interested in because he's
good-looking, rich and the son of a former
president, I can make more money. If throwing
in meaningless adjectives like "hero to a
generation" pumps the bottom line, so much the
better.
People end up caring about these media projections
because their peers do, because there are
billion-dollar companies trying to get them to
care and because it distracts them from their
lives (who of us has a life that can match the
non-stop excitement of that of a media-mediated
celebrity?).
I believe that this issue is at heart a
sociological, not a technical, issue. The
newspapers in my city (Globe & Mail, Toronto Star,
Toronto Sun and National Post) all devoted
above-the-fold pictures and headlines to the
JFKJ incident for several days.
SS
You can never be too rich, thin or cynical.
The article has its point in that digital media and technology are advancing the long arm of the media hounds, but one must ask the question, is the technology creating a problem? Or is it merely pointing out the obvious. The kind of glitzy television specials on the life and times of the Kennedys, and the recurring image of young JFK Jr. saluting his father have been all over the media in the past week. But the media game is not solely based on bringing us the news. Today, the media game is as competitive as wall street -- and they're out to catch our eyes. For every person that scoffs at the over publicization of the accident, there will be a thousand who watched with baited breath for every little scrap of news, a thousand who treated the scenes before their eyes as some soap opera in which they were ogling participants. And every soap opera has its heroic figures, and so the media paints a picture of JFK Jr. as a paragon of virtue, a noble hero for our times, not because its what they believe, not even because its the truth. I don't denigrate JFK Jr. here at all, he was a fine citizen of this country, a glitzy editor of a reasonably splashy political magazine -- but he was not the kind of nobility that the media ascribe. The media know though that a great many people in their audience would latch on to such false epics, such sentimentality, as bees to honey. They harp on that fact, and thus exaggerate, overemphasize and glitz the truth till what's left is a bizarre carricature -- but a carricature that catches the eye and keeps it there. And where is technology in all this? Its merely another tool, I don't think its time yet when the media are the kinds of information pushes that Katz implies. Remember, we still have that screen between us and them, we posess the simple power of the "off" button. We can close our eyes, we can think, we can strip away the falsity and look at the truth ourselves. We are not yet at that stage where truth and lies are indistinguishable. We can blame the media, we can be angry at them, but for now at least some of them stay true to their purpose. And is not that enough?
I agree that technology is the root of all this, but I think that to focus on technology in this context at this time is somewhat pointless. The technology that has allowed mass media to have such a dramatic effect on public opinion has been here for decades. Before we had the Internet (and only 50% of "us" do) it was TV. Before there was TV, everyone tuned in to the radio. Of course you have a completely valid point, but the technology is no longer the issue. If anything, I'd say, the growth of the Internet will/does help FIGHT the current forms of mass media at least as much as it helps things along. The reason for this? Television/Radio/Newspapers each have their own spin to a given story such as the JFK Jr. tragedy (in most cases, of course, the spin is no more than a slightly rehashed version of the same spin every other newspaper and tv show is presenting... it's rare that you ever get a different view from a major mass medium, just different wording). The internet, on the other hand, leaves room for people like you and I who don't need ratings to leave our comments, share our feelings, etc... and if truly intelligent people write comments that people are willing to read, the readers will hopefully gain a clearer perspective on things.
Anyway, back to my original point.
It has long been my opinion that the "American Public" -- and no doubt the majority of the global population -- is a bit on the lazy side when it comes to the world around them. People like to hear about other people, they like tragedy, they like drama... in short, they like to be entertained, and don't give a hoot about actually learning anything unless they've already developed a strong interest in the subject. So, the mass media play off of that, and rarely spend more than a few minutes on a story that doesn't involve tragedy or celebrity or high drama. And since information through non-mass-media channels is difficult to come by, people get used to hearing the same stories from the same viewpoints with different central characters, and the laziness is encouraged. It is THIS phenomenon that is the issue today. The technology that allows this to happen on such a huge scale has been here for a long time now. Let's try to concentrate on the real issue.
-dm
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
JFK JR WHO?
Ok, why is this guy special?
I didn't even know he existed until he was missing on the news reports.
This guy is no different than the rest of us. (well maybe real different than the Jerry Springer TV watching rednecks out there, ok, so I see the appeal for some people)
Who Cares!!!!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com