Media producers play a vital role in making sure that the business that “the media” conducts satisfies and keeps the consumers interested. The responsibilities that media producers uphold are: to make the news feel evocative, entertain the audience, educate the public, and most importantly to give consumers options. By making the news evocative or, in other words, making the audience feel connected to the story, the consumers are more likely to enjoy what is being produced because they are able to identify or relate to the situation presented. For example, if a news broadcast presented a documentary on diaries of people suffering in Darfur as opposed to just statistics being rambled off, the consumers are going to feel more compassionate and intrigued in the story. However, I feel there is a grey area in the media between entertaining the consumer and educating the consumer. After all, the main role the media plays in our society is a business designed to educate and entertain. Where do we draw the line? This is a tough commitment media producers endorse to the public, to provide education and entertainment, because when dealing with a broad heterogeneous audience it is hard to please most people with more education rather than entertainment. I believe that the media producers have to find ways to present “the boring news” in lively new ways to diminish the line between entertainment and education and simply make it one.
Lastly, when reading Republic.com 2.0, Ch. 1 I discovered another responsibility the media had to their consumers: giving the viewers options, but not so many options that the viewers become a narrow-minded type of audience. The book explains that this is another hard situation to deal with because how do you offer different types of options, but at the same time have to be careful with the amount of resources that you do offer so society doesn’t lose the sense of Democracy and free-speech? If people are given too many options they begin to listen and speak only to the “like-minded”. With evolving technology, the media has to be careful with the resources they provide to the public to avoid people obtaining tunnel vision instead of getting a holistic view, which is ultimately idealistic. To wrap up, media producers have difficult responsibilities to make sure that they remain in control of their business to avoid the collapse of democracy and the rise of extreme racialists, but also have to keep their business entertaining, educative, but also evocative. That is quite the job.
-Brittany Marien
In response to your statement that one of the responsibilities of media producers is to avoid the collapse of democracy I wonder if rather than avoiding it and trying to prevent it they are simply trying to prolong it. If you think about it, the amount of shows on T.V. has drastically increased in just a few years. You can learn how to make a light bulb on one channel flip it over to watch a Spanish soap opera then go three more channels down and buy a cashmere sweater for $39.99 plus shipping and handling. The media is constantly growing because the media is what we make out of it. If society wants a show then the media producers will create it. We are causing ourselves to be narrow-minded because we are the ones demanding specific programming. The media producers are just the ones providing it. And why not? With every successful show they create, more money is put into their pockets. Without the demand for new shows there would be no worry of the “collapse of democracy” but since there is, why should it be a problem to profit off of it. Why should they be the ones responsible for holding the idea together when we the public are the ones with sledgehammers trying to break it apart?
ReplyDeleteAmelia
Media is a two-way street; it influences us just as much as we influence it. That said, a large part of a media producer's job is to listen to the audience, and give it what it wants. As Amelia stated, their main goal is to make money, so why wouldn't they give us what we want? What people want these days is news that suits their beliefs, which places a lot of stress on the producers who must choose between giving us hundreds of options and hastening extremist views, and resisting our desires, limiting people to fewer options. Upon considering their paychecks, I'm sure they would all choose the former.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your thoughts on the very fine line between entertainment and education through the media. In any media outlet, there must be a balance enough to keep the audience satisfied. The problem is, however, that each outlet has varying resources, making it difficult to create a balance that is consistent with each medium. For example, newspapers already lack the resources to show videos, which in many cases evoke more emotions and empathy than do words. Media producers, in order to inform and educate their consumers, must work with every media outlet to keep the fine line consistent.
-Tricia
Besides new networks, the media has no responsibility to us. Like Amelia said, the media "is what we make of it", and therefore, the consumers are the ones who provide media corporations with their power. Take away their viewership, boycott their products, don't click on their website, you remove their voice. Our options are to accept it or fight it. In terms of their responsibility to provide broad, interesting, and universally accessible and agreeable content, the media don't hold that responsibility. However, the smartest media outlets will seek it out themselves and we must decide whether to jump aboard the bandwagon or not.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the news, media should have free speech and free reign to state their views, however, to aid the sponge-like people who have little discernment and will soak up whatever they are told, it might be a worthwhile investment for our country's future leaders for the FCC to create something (perhaps in the bottom right corner of the screen next to the logo of the station on TV) that states to which side this program tends to lean. Maybe there could be a 10 point scale, one being far left, 10 being far right and anywhere in between. That might help programs seeking to attract specific audiences as well. That would be tough to gauge, and might potentially create conflict, but it would at least raise some societal awareness.
-Luke deWilde
As consumers, we, the audience, determine the survival of the media. If we demand it, the media, all be it newspapers, television programs, social media, etc., must fulfill the demands in order to maintain their heads above water. If one media outlet does not provide, another will. This is to say, not only is it a race to provide the audience with what they want but a series of career moves that benefits themselves as much as it benefits the consumer. The media, as entrepreneurs, have freedom of the press, which allows them to do pretty much everything within legal limits to communicate to an audience and in turn, succeed from a business standpoint. As you said, Sunstein does argue that action should be taken in order to ensure that the media conveys multiple perspectives of news and entertainment to all different classifications of people, in order to maintain the true meaning of democracy. Although pleasant to imagine, his utopic idea could not be achieved without impeding on the rights of the media, the building blocks of a free nation, and the foundation of our democracy. I feel as though, although finding a media outlet that suits an individual could present a threat of radicalizing particular opinions or narrowing the different outlets utilized by people, we all are entitled to the option to choose which options we want to utilize. If someone takes on the power to restrict our sources of information and entertainment, how can we say that we have preserved our constitutional right of free press?
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the media has the obligation to both educate and entertain their audience, although the line between the two has been skewed. However, I feel as though the media has strived to make education entertaining because the fact is that there does not have to be a defining line between the two. The problem with this is that different audiences are entertained in different ways. For example, although one person may love the Colbert Report, I can imagine that significant populations of others do not find the same humor in it. Different audiences demand different things, once again implicating a need for a variety of media sources.
If at some point, the media is inhibited in their freedom to provide us with a variety of news sources whilst pleasing all audiences, it would interest me to see how society got turned to that point without having been taken over by a fascist regime or something along those lines.
Angelica
I definitely agree with your view that media producers have to find the delicate balance between entertaining and educating the public. However, I feel that it is also their job to balance profits with what actually benefits the greater good of society. Just as a parent must limit their child’s tendency to indulge, media producers should work to collectively establish an equilibrium where the public has enough entertaining options, but not so many as to push them to radical views. That the industry is of commercial nature does not mean that it is exempt from social responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tricia in that the media should work collaboratively in order to balance education and entertainment. There are advantages and limitations to each media outlet; with a collective effort, I feel that the media can better target their audiences (in turn gaining profit) and provide diverse enough options to entertain without negatively influencing them. This is not to say that competing companies should join hands to become one; with the variety of outlets available today such as the internet, printed newspapers and magazines, radio, etc. I think that even just better planning from individual companies could more efficiently promote entertaining and educative news. Media producers should take advantage of the diverse resources at their fingertips: with constantly evolving technology all the tools necessary to find the aforementioned balances are at their disposal.
- Amy
I agree with both Amelia and Luke - the consumers are ultimately the ones who drive what the media produces. Because the tactics producers use to attract consumers (personalizing their output, providing more and more outlets) work so well, there is no reason they will not continue to use them unless the public consciously decides to question them. If consumers make it undesirable to follow a media source that promotes Sunstein's democracy-undermining strategies, then the producers will be forced to respond.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it is hard to say whether consumers of mass media, most of whom are probably satisfied with their choices pertaining to their media consumption, will ever feel the need to push back against the companies that are providing them with "informative entertainment."
How can the public be motivated to hold producers accountable? And who should be responsible for this motivation?
^^ That was Kateline
ReplyDeleteThe Media's only real responsibility to the public is to keep them entertained so their advertising space will continue to sell. Like my fellow bloggers said above the public will choose to watch or not to watch whatever they want. Saying that, there is the question of should the media "feel" like they more responsibilities to the public. Such as, showing the public more of the shows and programs they dont want to see to open them up to new things, which according to Republic.com 2.0 is essential to keeping a good democracy. Personally I dont think the media will chance their audiences by limiting channels due to a "responsibility" they feel to educate their viewers.
ReplyDeleteJames C
But Luke is saying that "the media has no responsibility to us." While I agree with the fact that the media can do whatever they please, because they are the ones putting whatever they want out there, I disagree that they have no responsibility to us. The producers are held accountable for what is put out there, and they fire people accordingly. Think of Anchorman, when Ron Burgundy drops the F bomb and his producer immediately fires him. The producers have the most stress because they are overseeing everyone else doing their jobs, and in the end they know that if the audience does not like what they are putting out, they are risking losing their jobs. They have a responsibility to us to keep us amused, or informed, or otherwise risk losing our favor, which is money out of their pockets.
ReplyDeleteYet, I don't think that the public is unhappy with what is out there, simply because there are so many options available. If they are unhappy with one thing, they can simply not watch it.
James (we kind of posted at the same time) I completely agree with you. Because while it is geared towards the consumers, it is still a commercial enterprise.
ReplyDeleteAlso looking at Amy's point, in my opinion the Media can not work together, because they are set against each other. They each want to reign in more viewers than their rival stations, or readers, or subscribers etc.
If they try to work together to break different news stories than isn't it further separating them into different bias's? I think it would be better for someone to read the same story from two different sources, in which case they would get two different opinions on it and a more complete view on what actually happened.
I agree with Katie's statement regarding the Media's responsibility to "us". To say that they have no responsibility towards the viewers would ultimately mean that they have no use. The media has been so woven into our culture because it has become an essential entity in our lives. Its responsibility to inform us with well rounded information all while entertaining and educating proves that if they didn't have a responsibility to us, they wouldn't be in business. Everything that is aired, reported and depicted in the media is subject to the discretion of the producers behind the networks. It is their job to decide what we view, what we would most like to see, what we have to see, and what will make them successful. Therefore, the producers hold the highest responsibility to the public when it comes to media.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if Britney poses some very good points, and I tend to agree with most of what she is saying. The main goal of the media is to educate and entertain, but in the 21st century it seems as if the latter is much more important to media companies. This seems to be the main problem with media in my opinion. When the television was a new phenomenon there was one news station that everybody watched. Now, there are several hundred news stations that people watch all over the world. While this may have a positive affect on the public, it also has a negative affect on the public. If the public sees more news, they will be more informed, but if they are watching news that is either swayed heavily toward one side, or not produced in a manner in which the main focus is the actual news, it can be terrible for the public. The news needs to be informative first, entertaining second. A great deal of news shows have reversed that order, and contribute to the general public being ill-informed and not being able to form an opinion on very important topics.
ReplyDelete--Browning
I like what Brit says about the media having the responsibility to both entertain and inform while keeping it diverse. There is a fine line to walk when trying to make the information entertaining and the entertainment informative. One question that I see as troubling though is this. Are the individual stations/outlets responsible for having a diversification of information themselves or is the diversification to be created by the very existence of hundreds, thousands of media outlets? If one station or outlet tries to hold all the diversification itself then it loses its bias (is this possible) and its focus. Republic.com 2.0 talked about how people want to chose what they read, so would an outlet that is completely diversified survive? The public hold the media responsible for providing diverse information, but also for catering to their individual interests: another fine line to walk.
ReplyDeleteThere are clearly many responsibilities that the media owes to the public and we will see how they play out
-Austin
Brittany raises a good point in saying that media producers have a responsibility to find a balance between the informative and entertaining aspects of their products. Although their main task should be to inform, it is not enough. Producers must present reliable, relevant, and interesting information in a way that captivates its viewers or readers. As Sunstein mentions, “attention is a scarce commodity,” so that balance is key in keeping their consumers loyal. This is indeed a difficult responsibility but it is only through its fulfilment that media producers will earn and maintain their consumers’ support.
ReplyDeleteDepending on what kind of media we're talking about, the responsibilities of the producers change. For instance, it's ridiculous to say that the producers of a non-news oriented television show are responsible for informing and educating their audience. Their only goal and purpose is to entertain. The “education” that popular TV has imparted on our generation has culminated in a sea of useless facts and very little practical knowledge. This being said, there are other forms of media in which the producers do have some sort of responsibility in addition to entertainment. News sources, as you said, have the responsibility to inform us about goings-on in the world. The only other examples I can think of now are social media sources, which are responsible for enabling us to connect with other people.
ReplyDelete- Curtis
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