Feeding the beast

[friezaess]

Where do you draw the line between making something interesting and sensationalism?

That's a question I've been asking myself ever since I was introduced to the concept of slants. "How are you going to tell the story? Which angle are you going to push? Make sure you get both sides of the story, but people will tune out unless there's an us vs. them mentality." As with good novels, news articles require conflict in order to work. What troubles me is the creation of conflict and blowing things out of proportion.

Let me reiterate: We are literally taught how to create perceived conflict in stories where there is none.

Example- "A fierce cyclone attacked the rural town of Bumfuck, QLD last night laying waste to the local church." That's a shitty sentence, but the point is there are certain words like "fierce" and of course "attack" that imply a poor little country town is being ass raped by a big, evil force of nature. This may not seem like a big deal until you start applying such methods to stories about human beings and politics. Shows like A Current Affair are a very extreme example of demonisation and sensationalism, but it does showcase the mentality that goes behind putting out the news. (The 24 hour news networks in the US are particularly good at this.)

Of course without these techniques, news would be a lot more boring and hence no-one would pay that much attention. Maybe creating conflict is the best way to engage and therefore educate the audience. After all, no-one would read a novel with no drama, no suspense, no ACTION right?

Maybe what I'm saying is really obvious or maybe I'm completely misguided and way off target. I don't pretend to know how all this stuff fits into place, I'm just an ex-artist who likes her world news. However, when journos devolve into telling stories where people become characatures and conflict reigns supreme... that concerns me. Ever wonder why we always hear about war, pestilence and famine but never peace conferences and the like? That shit don't sell papers generate traffic like a good old fashioned skirmish, be it real or engineered.

Comments

[vysanthe.livejournal.com]

What you said is true, of course. When you add image doctoring (SHOOOPING.) and filmic techniques to that it just makes it worse. http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/ojcovers.gif

[friezaess.livejournal.com]

Dang, my tyres are less black than that.

[halfeatenmoon.livejournal.com]

You make a good point about how we're taught to perceive conflict where there is none, and also to look for sides to a story, usually so that we can position ourselves with one of them.

Beyond that, I don't know what to say, other than that the appetite that people in fandom have for total fluff indicates that there are certainly some people who crave stories without any kind of conflict whatsoever.

[friezaess.livejournal.com]

If fandoms are anything to go by, the news needs moar penis.