consulate events
7th Annual American Studies Seminar 2004
the media in a national and global context
news - entertainment - politics - diplomacy - globalization
The 7th annual American Studies Seminar began yesterday, organized by the American Consulate General and the University of Macedonia, with the support of the Municipality of Thessaloniki at the Lecture Hall of the Municipal Library of Thessaloniki.
Following are closing remarks from Sandy Kaiser Public Affairs Officer, Embassy Athens:
Presentation: Future of Media: Who Controls the Future in the New Information Era?
2004 American Studies Seminar
You will control the future in the new information era. You will have so many choices and sources for news that you will be able to design and customize the method and the content of the information material you select.
It will be an exhausting task, because there will be so many options.
The real question is going to be about what kind of choices you will make. Maybe you will decide not to make any choices, and get information through friends or family. Many people do opt out of conventional news consumption because they don't regard the media as trustworthy.
Will you be passive and read the most available newspaper, such as City Press? Those who operate that kind of paper are hoping you make that choice, and so are their advertisers. Or maybe with the best cover at the periptero. Almost all Greek papers are sold at newsstands, so they need to win you over every day.
Will you read a newspaper that matches your political or social beliefs? Vote for PASOK; read Ta Nea? Vote for ND; read Eleftheros Typos? Rizospastis? Newspapers as fashion accessories in cafes?
This is called a journalism of affirmation, where you look for news largely that confirms your preconceived notion of the world. You might basically have your mind made up about the way things work, and you're not really interested in being intellectually or philosophically challenged by other viewpoints. You'll stay with a certain source of info that tracks with your own ideas.
Nicholas Negroponte, a well-known thinker on these topics, called this personalization of the news "The Daily Me."
On the other hand, you might be bold and curious enough to read a paper that you don't often agree with, just to expose yourself to different points of view. (Know your enemy!)
Maybe you will not read papers at all. Greece has the lowest newspaper readership in the EU. (Newspapers here are proportionally expensive related to income.)
Maybe you'll get news from TV or radio. What will attract you to a program? Powerful images, a good looking anchor person, a solid reputation for news? I assume you are all serious people with an interest in being well informed about the world. Well, the good news for the future is that there will be more quality news and information available than ever before. Greece already has 140 TV channels and more than 1500 newspapers and magazines. There's gotta be some quality there, right? I don't know how many news websites there are. Add to this all the English-language sources you all have, being bilingual, and you will be overwhelmed with options.
The bad news for the future is that there is more poor-quality news and information than ever before. The sensational and the trivial, the titillating, the one-sided and the false have more homes as well. It becomes harder to separate fact from propaganda, spin from reality.
There's another version of this problem, which is, which truth is the real truth? During the Iraq War, there were at least a thousand news stories a day, and broadcasters could pick and choose. Was that the whole truth, or at least a representative truth?
You have to make thoughtful choices if you are going to be informed. You need to know about the people collecting the news and the people making money from it. Are the same journalists covering an issue also being paid by those who have an interest in their coverage? Are the publishers praising a course of government action getting lucrative government contracts on the side?
In the future, you will have more control and power over information, but you will also have to be more prepared to be an editor, verifier and synthesizer of the particular news you choose to consume. I wish you the best of luck.