Digging Deeper

I had a scare a few minutes ago. I opened up Explorer and read the headline, "Nagin Criticizes World Trade Center Rebuilding." My initial reaction was, "this guy had just gone off the deep end." Especially considering earlier this week, many of us re-witnessed the devastation of Katrina. "Levees" also exposed a few things that could have been done differently on Mr. Nagin's part. Based on the headline alone, I was thinking this may be the wrong time for him to be saying anything negative.

Upon actually reading the article, I see that what he really said was, "You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair." This was in response to a reporter from 60 Minutes asking about the post-Katrina damaged cars still found around the city. Obviously Nagin could have chosen better words than, "a hole in the ground," but people should be able to see the point that he is making.

On a much larger scale, it was a personal reminder that "creating headlines" is what sells printed news. By "printed" I mean, both the papers and online or any other place where you actually are reading the news for yourself. In television, it is called a "tease." The sole purpose is to get you to read the actual article or watch the segment. How many times does that happen in someone's busy, short stop, K.I.M., life? Far too often, people take headlines for face value. That's when information starts to get iffy. Especially as that information gets passed on from person to person.

The point is, we all need to be a little bit more pro-active in digging deeper into the issues that are presented to us in headlines and teases. I understand it's hard to keep up on everything with the busy lives we lead, but the truth is usually right there in front of us. It is up to us to take the initiative to scratch the surface or dig a little deeper to get to it.


In addition to the the aformentioned article, I have to also credit "The Matrix" and Mr. Dave Chapelle.

I saw Dave in Chicago last Saturday and this issue is one of the things he talked about. He started by talking about the portrayals of himself in the media when he stepped away from his show. The main point was that most of the things being said originated from the very company he had walked away from, Viacom.

Due to many circumstances, but most importantly, Michael Powell, the consolidation of media outlets has aggressivley shrunken over the past decade. As Dave said, there are about six media conglomerates that control everything we see on the television, hear on the radio and read in newspapers and magazines. That is definitely not a good look for the masses!

I remember doing a paper in college on the merger between AOL and Time Warner. At the time it was a monumental deal for various reasons. The biggest was that it signalled the official arrival of "new media." We all know about the riches that people made in the "dot com era," but AOL leveraged those gains into purchasing one of the largest media companies in the world. Time Warner held such entities as Time magazine, TBS, TNT, Warner Bros. Studios, and even Internet provider, RoadRunner along with a host of other companies. The deal was touted as a cynergistic means to cross-market, promote and advertise through all of these different media streams. Meaning AOL/ Time Warner now controlled enough media outlets to the point where they can now send one message through it's various streams (READ: Great Lakes) to hundreds of millions of people. After seeing the same message through various different outlets and numerous times over, people would probably tend to accept that as a "must be true" situation.

Getting back to Dave, it is his belief that Viacom- which owns: Comedy Central, CBS, MTV, BET and various other entities- began a slander campaign as a way to force him back to the show. It basically is the same technique that cops use when they put out an A.P.B. and release photos of a suspected criminal to the media. The sad part is, he even admitted that sometimes it almost worked. Not in the "I submit, I will come back to the show" vein, but in the questioning of his own sanity. He said he was sitting on a beach in South Africa and literally had to look around to make sure he was where he thought he was. We all know those surreal moments when you do a double take, just to make sure you aren't dreaming. His was on a beach in Durban. He said he looked around to make sure he really wasn't in an insane asylum and that he wasn't hopped on some doctor's meds that had him thinking he was on a beach. I am sure it only lasted a second, but it happened. And I believe it can and does happen to "regular" folk on the regular.

In my Katrina blog from last year I talked about the "tail wagging the dog," it's the same thing. Dig deeper! It could be the difference between ignorance and informed.