You are invited!
As a community representative, I am so very thankful to those folks at the OGO car share coop for coming to Kamloops to help us think through doing something similar here. Kelowna and Kamloops working together = magic!
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November 18, 2013
The Media's Electric Fence - My Column Today in the Daily News...
Some musings on where the media gets things wrong:
I am a news media geek. Before I even entered kindergarten, I would sit with my dad in the evening and watch the nightly news. My rock stars, in those days, had names like Knowlton Nash and Harvey Kirk.
I had a subscription to Time magazine all through high school. More recently, I applied to journalism school. I was pretty heartbroken about that rejection letter.
As city council members, we interact with the media a lot. There are at least five different media outlets that cover every council meeting. Of course, I read, listen to, and watch the
local media carefully.
I think their job is so important and, for the most part, I feel it is done well. Today, though, I want to focus on a big problem I see with the local media.
It's really a problem with news media everywhere, but I am going to focus on local examples. I'm calling this a problem with the media's "electric fence."
The media's electric fence acts as a boundary between what issues are acceptable for public discussion and what issues are frowned upon. The media's electric fence also acts a boundary between acceptable behaviour and unacceptable behaviour.
Electric fences can have good uses, but I argue the media often puts them in the wrong places. And, what's worse, they don't really share their reasons for putting them where they put them.
For example, why does the The Daily News's electric fence allow people to comment online with fake names? How does the often mean-spirited commentary and back and forth sniping encourage people to be thoughtful and community minded?
Radio NL's electric fence encompasses Jim Harrison's often hard-hitting editorials.
I am going to guess most of Jim's listeners would agree that Jim is a right wing, conservative commentator.
Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't. But it sounds to me, sometimes, like he is just going through the motions. He creates an editorial almost every day. How does someone have that many different opinions?
He may decide to make it more hard hitting than it needs to be in an effort to get folks riled up. I'm not sure that's really helpful to inspiring thoughtful community dialogue.
We live in an extraordinary time in human history — a time of great challenge and of great opportunity. Many people believe that it will take a great openness to new ideas and to each other to survive and thrive in the future. How does the media enable or block these efforts?
A word I often hear from my reporter friends is "interesting." If a story is interesting, it will get covered. Are important issues always interesting?
If the media's electric fence leaves important but not really immediately interesting stories outside its boundaries, is the public interest really being served? Why is a car crash given higher billing than the municipal budget? If a politician's personal foibles or an editor's pet
issue are allowed within the electric fence, what is getting left out?
I have a lot of faith in the media. I make one request: tell the public how you make decisions on what gets covered and what does not.
Give them a good sense of where you have put your electric fence.
