Feature: Technology, Media and Grief 280
Technology is a growing source of concern in the world because it changes in itself, and because its development generates other kinds of changes, many of them unforeseen.
The cover of the death of John Kennedy Jr. and his wife and sister-in-laws offers a vivid, contemporary look at how technology is affecting - sometimes overwhelming -- modern media.
Powerful and manipulative images - John Kennedy Jr. saluting his dead father's casket, nostalgic accounts of the Lost Camelot, images of weeping relatives, neighbors, friends and strangers, debris floating in water - are being transmitted technologically all over the United States and the world, repeated over and over again for hours, days, even when there is no new information to pass along.
As happened after the death of Diana Spencer, this grief becomes ritualized and globalized. It develops momentum of its own. People thousands of miles away - strangers who couldn't possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the principals in a far-off tragedy like this -are affected as grievously as family and friends.
For Americans these images are overwhelming, inescapable. They distort reality, crowd out other news and information and become so potent that become the locus of the country's civic business, the object of attention from public officials all the way up to the President.
When stories involve tragedies that happen to glamorous people - especially nice and attractive ones - technology transforms them into mythic, almost religious figures - Princess Di, and now, John Kennedy, Jr. They quickly becomes subjects not of journalism but adoration, their homes shrines, shrouded in flowers and testimonials. For different sorts of celebrities, however powerful - the controversial Mother Teresa comes to mind -- attention paid their passing is fleeting.
In recent decades, major stories like this have increasingly become driven by new technologies, especially the new genre of stories one could call Techno-Tragedies: the crash of TWA Flight 800, the OJ Simpson trial, the death of Princess Di, the war in Kosovo.
Thanks to satellite and digital advances, distant stories are no longer related to us by remote correspondents describing things we can't see for ourselves in places we can't go. Increasingly, journalists are referees presenting conflicting points-of-view, or simply narrators of images we are all seeing simultaneously, most frequently on TV, increasingly on the Net.
Techno-tragedies are driven by images rather than judgement, significance, reasoning or content.
Thus they frequently involve either celebrities or war. You will never see round-the-clock coverage on cable of famine in Africa or the declining quality of America's public schools. This kind of fusion coverage is reserved almost exclusively for potent techno-memes - people whose images warrant being fired all over the world at astonishing speed with numbing frequency.
War and tragedies involving the famous are perfect fuel for technologically - driven media. They offer riveting, addictive images. These images can distort reality. War is presented as bloodless and precise.
Nuance is nearly impossible. Diana Spencer, a humanistic celebrity, becomes a Saint. John Kennedy Jr. an affable magazine publisher, becomes the symbol of his generation, his tragedy a generational benchmark. Stories like Kennedy's plane crash are covered beyond all proportion or their natural place in news and history.
The power of technology seems to cause us to lose our moral bearings. There is no middle ground or civilized discourse, hardly any place to go to consider the impact of technology or the images it's bringing us in thoughtful, reasoned ways.
The tragic is confused with the historic. To be famous is to be heroic, to be earnest is to be noble.
"The news that John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Besette are missing at sea and presumed dead has struck such a crippling blow for my generation," wrote Douglas Brinkley, a contributing editor of Kennedy's George Magazine and a history professor at the University of New Orleans, in the New York Times Monday. "?it's hard to escape the pang of disbelief, the empty feeling that a magical friend has gone away."
On CNN, a friend of the Kennedy family said on Tuesday that Kennedy "was the icon, the moral leader for the next generation of young Americans." This theme was repeated throughout the weekend, on TV, in newspapers, and on discussion groups on the Web. On MSNBC, Kennedy was described as "the flower of his generation, the inspiration for young America."
As the family friends and admirers spoke, images of young Kennedy playing in the White House, saluting his dead father, being surrounded with paparazzi, walking bare-chested at Brown University, were broadcast on the screen over and over again, all over the world. So were eerie pictures of helicopters and boats searching and searching, relatives grieving and ravaged.
Many of these images were visceral, highly charged, all playing to sadness and sympathy, all choreographed visually to underscore pathos and import, to unnerve and disconcert.
In a media fusion event like this one, they are repeated countless thousands of times over days. The same impulses exist on the Net, and Web, of course, they the imagery is missing, thus the impact muted. Even the so-called "serious" media got into the mythology business, speculating about family curses and the always mythical "Camelot."
"It's like John Kennedy being assassinated all over again," wrote a Chicago woman in an AOL chat room devoted to the plane crash all weekend. "A black shroud has come over all of us."
This quasi-hysterical media rhetoric underlies the humility and unpretentiousness of John Kennedy Jr.?s own life.
He deliberately decided to forego a life of moral leadership and public service. He was, from most accounts, a decent, likeable Manhattan media fixture, a publisher of a slick, glossy, not-in-any-sense great magazine that focused in equal parts on politics and Hollywood.
What his death underscores is that technology -- always an engine of social change -- is radically reshaping, even replacing journalism, becoming an engine of change in and of itself. In stories like this, technology eradicates the core function of journalism - clear-headed truth telling and grounded perspective.
Few places in the developing world are free from this kind of bombardment. A wire service reported that Scandinavian, German, and British newspapers were running as many pages on the plane crash as The Boston Globe was.
Websites also attract fans, mourners, admirers, fueling the individual grief from yet another direction. From Friday on, the message boards at Msnbc, Abcnews.com and Cnn.com have been overwhelmed by outpourings of mourning and admiration.
As with Princess Diana, the tone is often worshipful, especially over time, and as these images are repeated, a process almost akin to religious fervor. This isn't surprising. The tragic figure is no longer a human being with strengths and weaknesses, but increasingly like God himself, unfailingly noble, generous and decent.
This is a problem on many levels. One is that the evolution of this kind of media is tailor-made for some glamorous demagogue to come along and be instantly and globally martyred. So far, at least, we've been fortunate that these techno-tragedies have centered on people who seem benign, even good-hearted. Perhaps that isn't accidental.
Another is that the modern techno media -- increasingly owned by greedy, giant corporations -- has naked conflicts of interest to deal with when it comes to making editorial decisions about the stories they choose to cover so massively. Is the death of John Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law really the most important story in the world for five days now? This myopia is an increasingly toxic side effect of all encompassing techno-dramas.
Domestic civic discussions and issues came to a virtual halt during the year-long OJ Simpson affair. And after a year of being relentlessly bombarded by a techno-scandal, the Monica Lewinsky story, Americans were stunned to wake up and discover the Balkans at war, and us going with them. So technology becomes a potent social force as well as an agent of change.
Media executives rarely make editorial judgements for the public good. On cable news channels, tragedy - especially tragedy involving celebrity - greatly boosts ratings. Ratings equal money. Cable channels like CNN and MSNBC depend on mega-stories for audience and profitability. On cable, MSNBC in particular has become the noxious home of the techno-tragedy and scandal, increasingly melding its obsessive coverage with its online prescence. Increasingly techno-media like cable present civics as shrieking confrontations, not obviously, because it's informative but because it's entertaining. Politicians screaming about the impact of Jerry Springer on kids would be spending their time more wisely looking at the civic screamers on cable.
In an environment like the Kennedy tragedy coverage - much technology, many emotional images, no news -- the atmosphere becomes surreal. There are few facts but endless amounts of time, space, cyber and air, to fill. Yet the images are so ubiquitous as to be Orwellian.
John Kennedy Jr. and his father were strikingly different figures, historically, a reality also being lost in the overwhelming volume of coverage. The elder Kennedy desperately wanted elective office, and articulated strong political visions. His son didn't.
The younger Kennedy was not the icon, symbol, or defining personality for young Americans, especially the increasingly important and influential generation building the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Kennedy Jr. was much more of a traditional, mainstream Eastern journalistic and political celebrity. He seemed disinterested in the young's most interesting, transcendent contemporary accomplishment -- the Internet. That says nothing bad about him, but it undermines the notion that the symbolic moral and cultural leader of the next generation has been cut down in the prime of life.
Sad as it us, the news from Martha's Vineyard ultimately says more about technology than it does about any individual people.
How do we deal with the fact that the very institutions we depend on for clarity and perspective provide neither? And that technology itself is becoming the end, not the means for some of our most powerful media?
Thanks to technology, images move quickly. Truth and clarity lags far behind. When it comes to sorting out the difference, we are on our own.
The solution (Score:1)
Just don't read the crap. You'll get a little contamination from your friends and relatives, but other than that you can stay clean. I had a lot of respect for Malda because he didn't do the same thing as everybody else in masscomm until you came along to contaminate the watering hole.
Why don't you go write for Rolling Stone or something?
jfk jr. was an idiot (Score:1)
his final, idiotic act: attempting to
fly that craft at night, over open water, without
the proper training and with a bum foot.
Kennedys have a history of doing dumb things
that get people killed: Teddy (how grotesque can one man appear?) and Mary Jo. And sometimes they do society a service by killing themselves: the child molester who hit a tree.
In JFK Jr's case, he ought to be vilified for
taking the lives of two innocent people in his
stupid, macho, final act.
Change? (Score:1)
What technological advances in the dissemination of news have changed, if anything, is the rapidity and impact of this phenomenon. Now we have a woman becoming a saint and a man becoming a myth within hours of their deaths, rather than months. We have practically inescapable bombardment of the individual with these modes of thinking, regarding people they don't even know.
But if anything, this will tend to diminish the tendencies JonKatz is decrying. After all, overdose of some behaviour usually leads to a balancing reaction. What technology has done is expose our irrationality and fickleness to us in a singularly bad light - the result of which will, one can hope, be a somewhat embarrased compensation for our worst excesses.
Increased communication flow is an opportunity for increased self-awareness. Just purely by statistics, SOME people are bound to take that opportunity.
Re:Too Much (Score:1)
This is just another example. It might as well have been a 911 on a raining night as a small plane. And, for that matter, both the 911 and the small plane would not have been at fault -- user error.
We should all be saying "He died as he lived -- like one of his own."
It is a real pity that he took some other people down with him, but they could have stayed. If they had gotten into a 911 with him after a few drinks they would have been as culpable in their own deaths as they were getting into a small plane with a low-hour pilot late in the day, flying visual, over water.
Re:Too Much (Score:1)
Let me give you some examples:
1. Classmates skiing at Telluride. Have a few drinks. Not paying attention. Skiing at dusk. One hits a tree and is paralysed. Was it drinking and skiing? Yes, the proximate cause would have been drinking and skiing but the real cause would have been being dumb enough to drink and ski.
2. Classmate goes driving while on vacation late in the UK. Turns the wrong way down a road and has a head-on with a truck. Dies. Was the problem those silly English laws about driving on the left side? No. Classmate wasn't paying enough attention. Dumb again -- you don't screw around with cars and speed if you aren't paying attention -- if you want to live.
3. Classmate flying a Cessna (I don't recall which one -- apparently one with a sterling safety record) decided to run up the Maine coast late in the evening in squall weather to get to his parent's house that evening. At some point, he decided to buzz his parent's house. Hits a tree top and pancakes. Was the problem those darned trees. No, not really.
See my point? The proximate cause of death was them hitting the water very fast. That was how they died, not why.
I wish all of you could understand how common this sort of thing is with these sorts of people and how little of a surprise it should be.
I have spent much less time around these sorts of people since Harvard. I have grown accustomed to people who don't die for stupid reasons. In fiancial markets, you work with a lot of people who came up the hard way, and they tend not to do stupid things like this. I remember hearing about the classmate who had died buzzing his parents from an old girlfriend who had always claimed that they had not been involved. She was horribly broken up about it and related the news to me while I was visiting my mother, crying. Sitting in the garden while my mother's gardener was putting in the new annuals, I thought at the time that people should be laughing at him. When she went inside, the gardener did just that and said "Stupid white boy." And I laughed. It never occurred to me to be offended because, well, that was as apt a summary as I could have come up with.
In the case of the younger Kennedy, I think that seeing it unsympathetically is very important. You note that "Our primarly collective experience with planes, barring the widely publicized accidents, is that of waiting, getting on, getting off, and leaving. The intermediary time, the landscape, the weather, is generally ignored." Well, yes, but that is because we aren't pilots. Most peoples' experience with brokers is calling and placing a trade. They have no idea what goes on -- that isn't their job. Even people looking for an offshore float of some kind only have a basic idea what is happening. That is the whole problem with hedges and derivatives, but that is a different rant. The younger Kennedy WAS a pilot and should have been paying attention.
There is a sign in the basement of the building in which I work on the loading dock that says "Think." That's all, just "Think." It is there to remind the people that work down there to pay attention lest they end the day with fewer digits than they started it with. They have to worry about it. The most I have to worry about it a paper cut, so I made up a sign for my desk that said "Hack." (Actually, I had one that said "Model" but it kept getting snatched.) Perhaps JFK Jr. needed one that said "Fly."
And I am being a smartass again.
Back to SAS.
Too Much (Score:2)
And what about the Coast Gaurd/Navy/NTSB investigtion. FIVE DAYS. I'd like to think I'd get that kind of goverment support if I crashed my Cessna into the ocean, but the truth is that if this happened to anyone else, it would hardly get a 5-minute segment on the LOCAL news.
Royalty (Score:2)
Excellent (Score:2)
1) Kennedy's plane was missing.
2) The bodies of the people on board were found.
That is _IT_. Everything else (beyond perhaps some details about the investigation into the cause of the crash and what not) is FLUFF. Pure, unadulterated media hype fluff. Amercians are being bred on the stuff, and it is not exactly healthy. Of course, beyond that, I figured exactly what kind of "public sorrow" and that sort of CRAP this would generate and chose not to watch any news of any sort for a few days.. for example a month might do the trick. You people want something to grieve about? Grieve about something worthy! You know what this kind of coverage in essence costs? Why don't you funnel it elsewhere, such as aiding in _REAL_TRAGEDIES_OCCURRING_EVERY_FREAKING_DAY_. There are many MANY people and families out there that have many more problems than the Kennedies. The Kennedies have been famous, in the limelight, rich etc. etc. Simply read the description of Kennedy Jr.'s life. Sure, his father died when he was young, but _many_ peoples fathers have died when they were young. Beyond that, look at what else happened in his life. Hardly looks like a tragedy to me. Wealthy, educated at Brown University, comfortable etc. I wish the media would just back off on these types of issues. Or at the very least, cover 10 of the everyday tragedies that occur in many peoples lives for every one "tragedy" that happens to a famous person. Well, I better stop ranting because I have already wasted enough time on this issue. If I were anyone out there, I wouldn't waste my time watching the news for a while, and I wouldn't bother thinking about this crap either. Thank you and good night.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:3)
No flight plan? The luser will whine "but he didn't have to file a flight plan" and yes, you donw have to type pwd before rm *, but is is a very good idea, proven by experience.
No survival gear? When I was flying, years ago, that wasn't an option -- people would complain about the weight all the time. The lusers will say "but he wasn't required to carry gear" and yes, you aren't required to do your backups either, are you?
Flying at night, visual, with so few hours? WTF? I guess "deathwish" is a little strong, but that is really, really dumb. The lusers will say "but he thought that he would be OK." I don't know how to categorize the stupidity here.
Flying with passengers this way. That makes him a killer, just like his uncle, except he couldn't swim to safety.
At least he helped clean out the gene pool a little.
Any votes for Darwin Awards?
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
From what I've seen of JFK Jr over the years, he certainly seems like a nice guy. He didn't seek out to be the next King Arthur. He just wanted to live life on his own, making an identity for himself as something more than the son of JFK. When asked if he'll run for office, he would dodge the question saying basically, "Maybe someday." The minute he is presumed dead, he is named Senator, Governor, President, and THE primary symbol for an entire generation of young Americans -- exactly the thing he always avoided in his life.
Rush Limbaugh (no matter what you think of him) had a clip of a woman saying that since she wasn't alive in the 60's, she has been cheated out of experiencing history in the making. Let alone events like Communism collapsing, the Berlin wall going down, espionage at many levels of our military, Mother Teresa, the President being impeached. These are nothing to many people today because the media hasn't treated them as anything. What events are momentous (in media coverage) for this generation? Diana and JFK Jr dieing, cigarettes/guns/video games causing their associated evils, Michael Jackson touching little boys, OJ Simpson.
The media used to be about reporting objectively, now it all about politics -- getting you to think they way they want you to. Unfortunately, all too many people are lazy and make decisions like voting based on sound clips and such they see on the local news. There is also the motive of outdoing each other. One network has cameras looking at a ship several miles out, so they all do. Over three hours were dedicated to staring at tiny ships when the families were dumping the ashes. Out one side of their mouths they were saying, "We are respecting the families' wishes to not be around during this," meanwhile having cameras with 40 foot lenses so they can zoom in as much as possible. It's all about hype, not fact.
Am I Missing Something? (Score:3)
But where does all this "blow to a generation" come from? Honestly, people die all of the time in more tragic ways, and nobody bats an eyelash. Are people's lives so pathetically boring that they have to take the events in other people's lives and make them their own? All I can figure is that people like this kind of stuff because it gives them something to care about. Why they have nothing in their own lives to worry about, I won't pretend to understand.
Where do we get info, then? (Score:2)
Or maybe we should just lock the door of the cabin and post "No Trespassin'" signs around our property and try to forget about that whole "Outside World" thing.
And what exactly is "clean"? I mean, don't you think that Slashdot might just possibly have a eensy-weensy little bit of bias in the way it sets up discussions? I mean, do you *really* think this just started with Katz?
Look, take your own advice: If you have Katz, don't read 'em; you can even set your prefs so that you don't even have to look at his articles. If you still insist on "contaminating" yourself, why don't you go bitch to your dog or someone else who cares about it?
----
Re:Where do we get info, then? (Score:2)
----
It's sad, but I don't care. (Score:1)
Technology has made mass hysteria and idiocy more obvious and annoying than at any other point in the past. Live and in living color on CNN "Talking head morons!" in stereo.
I'm sick of all of this JFK/JFK Jr/RFK/Princess Di Crap!
Crap is exactly what this stuff is. Sure, they might have been great people if you knew them, but NONE OF US DID! There has been this facade of Camelot manufactured by publicists, and the media that is supposed to make us think that the Kennedys are some great American success story. Joe Kennedy made the family fortune by bootlegging booze during prohibition. Joe Kennedy bought the presidential election. He paid mafia figures in Chicago to get dead people to vote, sometimes more than once. The only thing lacking is for Teddy to drink himself to death, and we can finally be done with them.
You had to be in the social/societal 31337 to even get close. JFK died over a decade before I, and many of you, were even born. I don't care. I don't feel chills when I see the footage of his horse drawn casket and see little "John John" saluting. It doesn't do a fscking thing for me.
On a local talk readio show this morning when I was driving in to work some 40-something host was wondering aloud if our generation would regard this "tragedy" they same way that his regarded the assassination of JFK. I say hell no! I'm not going to cry for JFK Jr. He was a spoiled rich kid who grew up and finally got himself in so much trouble that his family couldn't bail him out. This guy was also speculating about JFK Jr being president one day. WHAT?!?!?!?! He was a damned magazine publisher, not a politician! Are we to believe that JFK Jr inherited some grand ability to lead the country from a man who died before he even got to know him? Give me a break.
What is it about middle-aged white people that has them enchanted by "royalty" be it actual, percieved or even bestowed.
I cried when my father died. I cried when my mother died. I cried when my friends died. I cried when my relatives died. I'm not going to cry for some stranger, and I don't understand why anyone else does. Reality check time, YOU NEVER MET THEM. YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO MEET THEM. THEY DIDN'T KNOW THAT YOU EVEN EXISTED. THEY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
You're not children, stop the damned crying already.
LK
Re:Generational differences (Score:1)
I never thought of it like this before.
You make a good point. It's more nostalgia that anything else which drove JFK Jr's celebrity status.
Either Way, I'm sick of hearing it.
LK
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
I said the same thing in a comment to another article regarding this same topic. The guy was basically stupid to do something like that - he had just barely enough experience for night flights (you are apparently required to log 40 hours minimum, he'd logged about 44), and the conditions were (as you said) very bad for flying anyway. It was a final, foolhardy act on his part.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:2)
Am I just too young (19) to get this?
But where does all this "blow to a generation" come from?
Whatever generation they're talking about, it must be older than 33(me) and younger than 19. The impact to me is no different than if 'Jim Smith of Topeka (who nobody's ever heard of) died today'.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
> Are people's lives so pathetically boring that they have to take the events in other people's lives and make them their own?
(donning my Nomex undies here)
Ummm ... some people's lives - yes. IMHO, that's why sports are so popular - when the (foot/base/basketball) team wins, those people think "WE won", as if they personally had something to do with the victory.
Re:Needs (Score:1)
> Wasn't it Einstein who said something about the individual being smart and the masses being stupid?
Not sure about Einstein, but "J" said it in "Men In Black".
Re:But Jon, what are you avoid^H^H^H^H^Hforgetting (Score:1)
But it's interesting to compare and contrast how Katz talked about the Columbine incident here and how he did elsewhere, where he did a good job of parroting the party line about how much guns were responsible, etc... at the same time, he was taking a different attitude towards the gun situation here, and actually admitting that there were people on the other side of the issue that weren't raving loons (something the mainstream press doesn't do, and that he didn't do when discussing the accident in "mainstream press" mode rather than on slashdot) and trying to act like he wasn't pontificating, because he knows this is a different audience.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
British Media (Score:1)
So two questions:
Why are the UK media so obsessed with a minor celebrity that the majority of the UK public have never even heard of? (they did the same thing with that Simpson bloke)
How can anyone truly believe that the death of this guy can bear any comparison to the assasination of JFK?
Filters (Score:1)
"Accident" my foot (Score:1)
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
So perhaps that's the foundation of this obsession we currently see, but it does not answer to the larger issue of the single-mindedness of the media (not to be confused with journalism). It is the reason I will not watch The Media, I've been conscious of this nonsense for some years now. I think Katz is bang on target with his essay (though this one lacked a bit of focus in my opinion).
In the end, if you want diversity in your news (outside of the nerd envelope) I suggest The Economist. The subscription is a bit pricy, but the quality and quantity of real news is unbeatable. It covers the entire world in depth, from Africa to Europe to Asia to the Americas. It's scientific reports are befitting of specialized journals, as are it's business and economic sections.
In the end, perhaps whether one allows one's self to be saturated with The Media or if one seeks real news is another dividing line being drawn by the Information Revolution. Windows vs. *nix, Big brother vs. grass roots democracy, The Media vs. journalism.
We each must choose, and our choices will define who we are.
This is the one thing i dont like about Slashdot. (Score:1)
The thing that angers me is reading all of these comments and seeing all the comments by angry geeks about how they hate the coverage on news blah blah blah. Our community comes off as insensitive and frequently caught in bickering amongst ourselves. Someone says they hate Linux and next thing you know they get 5,000 emails calling them a whole range of explitives. JFK jr. dies and they all say "Who cares? what supid OS will the amiga run?" Well i care. I dont think that someone who lived his life genereally as a very nice person should be disrespected because a media frenzy surrounded his death.
Re:so you're saying that you hate linux? (Score:1)
Even JFK Jr.'s perceptions have been distorted (Score:3)
JFK Jr. had said that he didn't know if he actually remembered his time in the white house as a small child or only thought he remembered because he had seen and heard so much about it.
Technology replacing media?? (Score:1)
Technology comes along and (arguably) gives the media a way to dress sensationalism respectably & convincingly, and it's no surprise that the media is running wild with it.
Sure, technology is involved. But I'd argue that it's only removed certain established checks & balances, to use an overused term. Maybe this will backlash, and the pendulum could swing the other way. Who knows.
Jim Smith of Topeka died? (Score:1)
Crap. Now that I've heard of him, I feel like I've lost a member of my family. I'm going to go buy some flowers and put them outside his Topeka home. He was America's archduke.
Re:I don't watch television, so ... (Score:1)
The message I'm replying to should not have been moderated down -- it was both on-the-point and funny. I love the folks who either (a) claim to never watch TV, or (b) claim only to watch PBS when they're watching. Why aren't they turning up their noses about the Web, which is capable of being far as crass, mundane and mind-numbingly stupid than television?
Social force of the media (Score:2)
The media has always been about supplying what the public wants to view, and this is something that is continued to this day. Many people I have talked to recently regarding the plane crash have taken the viewpoint that the media should show some modicum of responsibility for the content that it provides the public, rather than sensationalising that which they know will draw public attention.
A lot of people complain about the crap that is aired on the media and the lack of substantial content that is immediately relevant to our own lives, but do we really want the media telling us what is relevant to us? I am happy with things the way they are, I see nothing but fluff in the daily news each night, crowd drawing spectaculars of fire and noise and death, but I am happy feeling that this is not important to me, that instead of attempting to tell me what I should know, they are showing what they think people will watch. We are in the James Cameron era, where wonderful light and sound and camera angles emotional traps are commonplace and are the magic which the media uses to draw its crowds.
The media is the new cinema - watch it, listen to what it says, but don't allow them to tell you what is important.
Pathetic (Score:1)
Re:Too Much (Score:1)
Figure is missing.
Bad thing assumed to have happened to Figure.
If Bad Thing involved a car or plane, everything is done to minimize operator error by the Figure in the accident (i.e., the search for whether an instructor pilot was in the plane or not, so it could be his fault, instead of JFKJ's fault, even if it was found that JFKJ was flying the plane).
Oh, it *was* pilot error. Well, he was Popular, so we tend to ignore it.
Isn't the coverage here a little bit different than the plane crash of the little girl who was trying to fly across the country with her dad?
Will there be a spate of newly proposed legislation for General Aviation to try and make this National Tragedy not happen again, like there was for the girl's plane crash?
Re:2 points (Score:1)
You have the source of her controversy:
A), Mother Teresa was Catholic, in a country of Hinduism and Islam.
B) She helped the poor, the "untermenschen", of Indian society. People who do this are by nature loathed by the System, the Man, etc. She basically was forcing the society to not ignore these people because, well, they were/are people. Anybody who does this tends to get the wrath of the rest of the community.
C), that you, and probably many others, disagreed with her religious beliefs, is also a source of controversy.
How did/do you feel about Rev. Hunthausen?
No, I don't need to know, but think about that, and the problems the American Catholics have in the eyes of the Pope in general...
Religion is as much about politics and social control as it is about faith.
Sorry -- my cynicism cut in.... (Score:1)
I predict that the media will burn out people's nostalgia for fake celebrities like JFK Jr. pretty darn quick. Of course there will always a core group of media consumers who will eagerly lap up people's news and tragedies...anybody who grew up in a small town will know that there were always gossips and the same faces that would show up at every funeral.
Let's not mistake the gloss of media attention for some new heightened reality. People remain being people, whether they get the news via TV and Internet, or over the back fence.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:2)
It was a fun day.
Re:In the beginning was The Word (Score:1)
Re:The score (Score:1)
Re:Four Arguments for the Elimination of Televisio (Score:1)
An interesting perspective on the effects of television is to be found in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "I Remember Babylon". It's well worth reading for anyone who watches television or lives on the same planet as those who do.
In his usual badly in need of an editor and proofreader way Katz has a few good points but I'd be curious to know if he tried to publish in George and got rejected.
Re:Too Much (Score:4)
At the top of if the JFK Jr. lunacy, they started interviewing REPORTERS who had interviewed JFK, like they were personal friends. And yes, I know that JFK Jr. was a journalist, or at least had a magazine, but I'm talking about people who have met him once during an interview.
The only thing really interesting I heard along this line was Pres. Clinton talking about a tour of the White House he took JFK Jr. on just a few months ago; in which JFK Jr. hadn't been in since JFK Sr. was shot. Everything else was kinda, well, forced.
Re:I don't watch television, so ... (Score:1)
all the buzzwords are there but... (Score:1)
How is the ability to send images to television anything new? Or do you mean technology from 50 years ago is continuing to overwhelm journalism?
Grief is ritualized and globalized? Don't you think this is a little vague and unsubstantiated?
I think comparing JFK Jr. to Diana is a leap. I think that a lot of the grief is people reliving the death of a president and the realization of what that family has been through. Which is different than grieving for the death of a media figure.
Does techno-tragedy mean anything or are you actually trying to create new phrases?
No middle ground for civilized discourse. Has technology changed this somehow?
In a nutshell I disagree. The thing that is magnified most by technology is glamorization of technology.
hehe (Score:1)
//Sure, she was trying to fight for human rights and all that other stuff, but what did she *really* do for the world?
So what exactly are you *really* doing for the world? We want our oxygen back troll.
No (Score:1)
Besides that really doesn't tie in to the 'American Dream'.
Unless you can be adopted by the royal family...
Re:Vot is dis verld coming to? (Score:1)
All of those commercial breaks should be telling us something.
And those JFK jr. comments are likely sarcasm alluding to the over-coverage.
It would be nice if we could all just take in the data and process it. However, this would take up to much time. We hope that the news people filter/package it and present it to us in a clean format but it's just not possible. They have to keep ratings up to keep selling those commercials. And they have to keep from upsetting the people who are buying commercials.
The conflict of interest is huge.
I don't have a TV temporarily and don't really miss it.
'The news is just stories about the same events happening to different people' -HDT
Irrelevance squared. (Score:1)
So, Katz, to prove you're really part of the real-world you had to write about John Boy's demise, but to prove that you're "superior" you had to write a critique of the coverage
FWIW you missed the real story, which is NOT that newer technologies provide more ways to saturate the world with pandering emotionalism, but that the alternate "news" technologies combine with a growing comtempt of mass media among the literate to render mass media "news"
ever less relevant. In consequence the mass media news providers, dependent upon their shrinking ever less skilled audience both financially and to sate the fat ego's that uniformly attire mass media "journalists", simultaneously more shrilly and pompously (if indirectly) assert their own importance while
pimping riper trash to a lower denominator with each passing day. The resulting circus is far more amusing than most of the fare proffered as
"news" - if you care to watch. I don't.
-- TWZ
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
(For example: Most people never knew that Roosevelt couldn't walk. The press was instructed not to let on, because people would think the president weak.)
Now that the barrier of respect is gone (ie, Lewinsky and Clinton), those of our generation don't have the experience of this reverence. So JFK Jr. represented one of the last people that was treated in this manner, his father.
In some ways, I think it might have been better back then.
TV (Score:1)
It's a highly recommendable experience.
I frequently wish that it was possible to subscribe to cable only for particular shows.
(of course then they'd probably crank up the price of cable immensly.. pay per view shows... eek)
Still I live above an ISP, the net has taken alot of what used to be TV watching time, it's ethernetted right in.
Still, I think the thing that makes the big differance is that we don't just surf.. when we watch tv, on tape, it's something that we were wanting to watch, and nothing more.
Spend alot more time reading and working on things on the machine!
I recommend it.
Give it a try.
Humanity and grief in an over-connected world (Score:5)
strangers who couldn't possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the principals in a far-off tragedy like this -are affected as grievously as family and friends.
This is the thing that scares me the most about our modern media-frenzied culture; I think the trend runs precisely contrary to Katz's idea here, that what what we are seeing is the cheapening of tragedy and suffering; people are being affected "as grievously as family and friends" not because they feel somehow connected to the incident, but becauyse they have become disconnected from those that should matter to them. We have cheapened mourning and made it a media event. We think a family's suffering is something to be gawked at. So what happens when a calamity hits home? Instead of learning about grief through personal grieving and relation with family and friends who are grieving, we learn about it mostly from watching others on the far side of a satellite disconnect.
Techno-tragedies are driven by images rather than judgement, significance, reasoning or content.
I fear that this is becoming the case in politics, family, religion, and education as well. It's just easiest to see in a media event, er, family tragedy like this one.
Re:Old Hat (Score:1)
Look before you leap.
Technology? No. "Unbridled capitolism? yes (Score:1)
it has *nothing* to do with technology. We got *exactly* the same in the sixties, though nowhere *near* so over the top. It's just gotten worse and worse over the years.
Funny, that's at the same time that media mergermania's been going on. About 10 years ago, Molly Ivins looked around, in a column, and noted that something like 90% of *ALL* the media in this country were owned by 29 corporations. You will recall that there have been mergers, since then.
The fact is, we have almost *no* "independant* media.
To the folks who criticise you by saying that folks must lap it up, since they publish want sells...wrong. They publish what they *want*. Welcome to the fact of a company town. Yes, I've argued with [Ll]ibertarians over the years, and their response has always been, "you don't like it, start your own, or leave". I don't see anyone competing right now. Got a gigabuck or two to spare, guys?
And then, of course, there's the point that if this occupies all the media space, then they don't have to cover anything else, like why we don't fully fund Head Start, or public education, or the space program, or the tax cut for the rich (that is, including the owners of the media).
Welcome to unbridled capitalism...and why it was bridled by our parents and rgandparents in the first place.
Needs (Score:1)
I'm sure many of you don't agree with that statement, but the fact is that many people need someone to look up to and admire.
Many americans have selected the Kennedys for this.
In Europe, we have a lot of royal families that people use for this, but we also have our differences between generations. Personally, I don't care much about the royal family in Norway, where I live, but many people actually do. I have a hard time understanding why people care so much, but that's the way it is.
It's the same thing with religion.
Wasn't it Einstein who said something about the individual being smart and the masses being stupid?
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
Re:Too Much (Score:1)
If we call this ultimate act of Kenedy Stupidity (there are many examples) a 'trajedy', what do we reserve for mass destruction? Earthquakes? Floods? Famine?
At best, this whole incident can be considered unfortunate, and at worst another example of a Kennedy doing something stupid and offing himself, and some hapless participants.
As for the investigation, that is standard operating procedure. Fishing boats get pretty much the same treatment when they go down. No press coverage though (outside of New Bedford or Gloucester where these vessels naturally came from). Usually there isn't as much hope, or hype.
Re:In the beginning was The Word (Score:1)
In it's heyday, if you wanted access to the largest corpus of human knowledge, you learned to read Greek. Today Java builds semantic bridges across wide gaps in computing semiotics. It is both portable and expressive...and thus impactful.
Re:In the beginning was The Word (Score:1)
Now I'm bowing out of this; it's turning into a language holy war.
In the beginning was The Word (Score:4)
You over-rate the power of the media (Score:1)
Is Linus Torvald worthy of our attention but JFK Jr. or Bill Gates are not? It depends on how interested you are (a situation that never lasts very long anyway.)
Ignore the hype and save some dough like I did. I avoided the entire Monica Lewinski debacle so totally that I wouldn't recodnize her in an elevator hawking her new "'Oval Office' brand" knee-pads and dress stain remover. (Okay, I didn't buy a news paper or watch TV news for almost a year to avoid the "star-f*cker".)
You only pay attention if you care and look else where if you don't. The ubiquity of the coverage may become a tad annoying but that's as much a reflection of your interest, or more precisely, lack there-of, as it is a reflection of the media's need for something to fill their pages with (regardless of the sentiments and level of interest of the producer's and editor's of the media pieces.)
Its too bad that the Kennedy/Bessettes crashed and sank but its not as important to me as it would be if *I* crashed and sank. Sad but there it is.
Propaganda isn't what it was when Lenie Rifenstal created "Triumph of the Will" because the media are no longer what it was back then: a tightly controlled mouth-piece for the powers that were or are. Media are now degenerate (I don't mean that in a pejorative way, just a factual one,) trivialized and specialized.
Don't perpetuate topics you don't care about by lamenting them.
-Charles-A.
A question (Score:1)
Well I for one don't see technology changing the media at all. What new technique were they using in the coverage I didn't watch, Jon? Were there 3D recreations of the crash? Did they use personality analysis software to guess how JFK Sr would react to his son's death? Did they, in fact, do anything with technology that wasn't done previously in some form on television, or radio, or in print, or gossiping in the bathhouse? Maybe you're just overawed by this new fangled tee vee set what makes it look like you're really there.
And by the way, the image 'techno-media' conjures in my mind is of a reporter shouting to be heard over a pounding bassline with colored spotlights flashing in the background and club kids gyrating on Ecstasy. Maybe that's just me.
Using Microsoft software is like having unprotect sex.
Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:1)
So you mean to say that mass media isn't living up to the 'political good' set of assumptions we've been force-fed since America started up and Free Press was one of the issues on the table? BFD.
My first reaction when I saw JFK headlines screaming on cnn.com was that yet another Kennedy was shot, oh, boo-hoo. Could there ever be a more loathsome, rich, legally untouchable, hypocritical, boozing family on the face of this planet? If there is, please, shoot them too.
My second reaction was that someone or something really has it out for the Kennedys, and they deserve whatever they get.
I emerged from the womb the year before JFK was shot, and I have never had any feelings other than extreme distaste for that clan, and I wonder about the sanity of the people who wax nostalgic whenever yet another 'tragedy' happens to them.
Jon, where's your outrage about the USA-UK intelligence cabal that gets around the legal issue of wiretapping by sharing each other's data? You know, the deal about that spy tower in Northern England that wiretapped Irish communications for ten years, in a completely illegal fashion? There will be no reprisals, no arrests, and no change in government policy or intelligence activities, either across the pond or here at home in America. Now there is a technology story (or series, like your excellent work on the Columbine shootings and how geeks are social targets for bully-boy jocks) that Slashdot readers would love to froth about.
This article was a swing and a miss. Slashdot is about technology, paranoia, Linux, and hatred of Microsoft. Stick to the topic, sport. And keep writing.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
Jokes (Score:1)
Sorry. I didn't say it was a funny joke...
Re:No, your not missing anything. (Score:1)
http://bitch.shutdown.com/kennedy.html
I'm pretty tired of the intense amount of news coverage of the crash, search and funeral - unfortunately, we'll probably have to hear about it for a few weeks more. Bleh.
NPR: National Public Relations (Score:1)
Better news source: CS MONITOR (Score:1)
Technology or Technocracy? (Score:1)
The desperation at every level to find some angle, any angle at all, leads to ludicrous extremes. In a week when China and Taiwan are inching ever closer to war, Time magazine devotes 36 pages to a full-colour obituary. On Entertainment Tonight, the cast of The Practice wax eloquent on the meaning of it all. And, silliest of all, a local news program's "high tech" analysis of the plane crash the other night turns out to be pointing a video camera at a computer screen running Microsoft Flight Simulator!
The frenzy will die out, as they all do, but the problem will remain. If we really want to improve the situation, we need to start by fixing responsibility where it belongs: not on all the shiny hardware, but on the people who make the decisions, and maybe on the corporate media's whole way of doing business. It's only going to get worse from here.
Re:People read it anyway; Re:The solution (Score:1)
Re:Even JFK Jr.'s perceptions have been distorted (Score:1)
>much as our society of personality worship.
Personality worship isn't specific to our society or to any society. It's only human to focus on the personalities in any story. The problem comes in when the media focus on the personalities to the exclusion of hard news, or, worse, when the personalities are the story -- the Baba Wawa effect. This happens because the news organizations' public responsibility is undermined by their corporate responsibility to make a profit. The resulting competition for eyeballs and attention spans forces them to pander to the public's worst instincts whether they want to or not.
Some people on this thread having blamed the public for being gullible, for lapping up whatever the media throw at them. Instead of blaming the media for pandering to people's worst instincts, they blame people for having worst instincts to begin with. I wish these complainers wouldn't be so quick to condemn people for being people instead of saints.
Commercialism and technology (Score:1)
Though, i disagree with Katz on the idea that this is some revolutionary change brought about by the internet. I have the fortune of having many old pre/during/and post WWII Times magazines from my grandfather. It seems that the news is more tainted in those than today's news. I read about internment camps during WWII in the US in my Civics class in high school, one of the most incorrect and unjustified things America did in WWII. But to read the old Times article about them, you would think that they were resorts and only the bad Oriental Americans were put there.
To sum up, the biggest difference between news 40 to 50 years ago and news today is that technology, not neccesarily the internet (e.g. satellite feeds, cell phones, instant communication, email) allows for a much more violent, accurate, and awefull view of the world. News today is just as sensationalistic as before, but it is crammed down our throats and jammed in our ears until we can't stand to hear one more thing about it. The one thing the news has created for us today is a lack of heros, morals, and things to believe in.
-Z
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
When I mentioned this to my wife, she asked me to put it in perspective this way: let's say you're a child of the 60s. You grew up with JFK, a president who, at least posthumously, is one of the most lionized leaders of our nations history. At the age of twelve, you might have watched the funeral: Jackie-O and her poor, 3 year old son standing at the grave site. Now, so long after, the child who you may have seen for the first time at his father's grave is dead.
Of course it means little to you or I. But we don't feel the same way about our nation's leaders that our parents did about JFK, and in a sense, I think that sense of nostalgia and loss just got passed on to his son.
Here's a thought experiment: let's say that in an alternate reality, Clinton had turned out to be one of the most beloved presidents in American history, but died tragically young, probably while in office. Twenty or thirty years later, would we mourn the loss of Chelsey the way our parents mourn Jon Jon?
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:1)
-Rich
Generational Icons (Score:1)
As far as generational icons go, this is a label generally misplaced, as it is often imposed by the previous generation. However, there are situations where it is completely appropriate. One must first remember that not all members of a generation are the same before accepting this point. Perhaps a more appropriate term is "subculture icons". Look at it this way: Many of the readers on this site look up to and iconify Linus Torvalds for his contributions to the Linux/Open source community, and for his ideals on software copyrights. Nothing wrong with that. Of course, if the media was to refer to him as a "generational icon", half the world would say "What the hell does some geek have to do with my generation? This is ridiculous". The same goes for many of the individuals that we refer to as "irrelevant" to our lives. I'm not saying that JFK Jr. is a prime example, but perhaps a large subculture of our society feels that he was a person to look up to. I can't argue that, from what I know of him, he was a well-spoken, affable man. Personally, I think a reasonable icon for my subculture would be Mr. Bill Gates. I realize I'm inviting flames here, but the point is, a ton of us look at him and say "Look at that, I could do that." Thus the start-up craze. I'm not saying we necessarily agree with all of the business practices of Microsoft Corp, or even Mr Gates himself, but I know there are an awful lot of people who would like to realize that kind of success coming from what began as a relatively small operation, and having that kind of societal influence.
I'm not really sure of what my point is here, except maybe that we should all choose our own heros and icons, and accept other people's choices as well. Maybe that kid who got in the accident is a hero for some, and if that helps make their lives better, I suppose, so be it. (yeah, yeah, so I contradict myself...that's what happens when rational thinking overtakes a rant....doesn't make any of it wrong...)
Re:In the beginning was The Word (Score:1)
Why insult it by comparing it to Java, which in overblown hype ranks right up there with the coverage of JFKj's death?
BTW Katz, the gratuitous references to MS in your stories to hook the Linux weenies is wearing a bit thin. I still remember the time you tried to compare George Lucas to Bill Gates in your (possibly deserved) trashing of Phantom Menace. Give it a rest.
Re:My first JonKatz Rant (Score:1)
To sum up, there are no major revelations in Katz' piece, and the stuff he is talking about has been going on for decades if not centuries.
Rehashes of the bleeding obvious tinged with sixties-style idealistic longing for things that will never happen do not suddenly become insightful journalism because you add the buzzwords "technology" and "internet".
Re:IDIOTIC MODERATION (Score:2)
display scores." uncheck "willing to moderate."
this is the only way to read slashdot. i am
totally unwilling to let people i don't know judge
posts i haven't read to determine whether they're
appropriate for my own consumption.
i can make that decision on my own, thankyouverymuch.
Good article (Score:1)
Through technology the media is striving to entertain its audience with the tragic stories they report. They realize that if they get do more than just report, but show gory images, high tech graphics, interview overly emotional people, etc that they will have a much larger viewing audience. They ultimately attempt make the viewer feel that he/she is a part of the story.
This causes a problem when the media by itself has the power to choose what news you are to be interested. It also causes others to try to redirect the media attention to themselves. Why did the WhiteHouse announce the finding of JFK jr.'s body? Did they conduct the search? Are they directly related to the incident in any way? No, Bill just want some attention.
Even worse than that is media ability to create idols or gods. This scares me. I am a christian and know quite well the warnings in Revelation. In no other time period has it been possible for a person to gain fame instantly. I didn't even know what JFK jr looked like until this weekend and yet he is supposed to be the bright flower of my generation? What I'm getting to is that the anti-christ will be able to use technology to become a god. He will use the media to make him famous even worshiped overnight.
Because of this I find technology entrigueing and frightening at the same time.
Just thought I'd share my views.
-Al-
Re:Not News for Nerds (Score:1)
Besides I liked it. I found it more to be an article about the media and technology more than an article about jfkjr.
-Al-
Re:2 points (Score:1)
I have little respect for anybody who idolizes celebrities. They just prove that they think celebrities are better people then them.
-Al-
Re:Humanity and grief in an over-connected world (Score:1)
News media turnning into trendy media (Score:1)
There is plenty of real news going on. Read
Instead they want to talk about famous people who died becouse it sells.
The news has gone tabloid and now I get my news from
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Score:1)
Jerry Mander analyzed this effect of television (among other) over twenty years ago, in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television [amazon.com]. It's still very relevant today; I would urge anyone who's concerned about the negative effects of media to read this book.
To paraphrase Mander, he argues that television is a noisy channel (in the information-theoretic sense) with certain bandpass characteristics. (Mander doesn't phrase it that way, he's a former advertising executive, not an engineer.) Crap passes through relatively unperturbed by the channel, while quality suffers an impedance mismatch and suffers enough noise and/or attenuation that it doesn't stand much of a chance.
"We have become a country of restless, shallow people accustomed to being entertained every moment of each day." ---Michael Medved, Film Critic
Iconaclastic JFK Memories (Score:1)
However, I found myself this week grieving JFK Jr.'s death more than I thought I should, and I couldn't figure out why until I read this article.
Certainly I feel a certain sadness for his family's loss. But, aside from he being the first really "famous" person from my generation, I had almost no inate connection to him or his politics or life's aspirations until his death. I never read George.
But still, I could not put my finger on why I felt so badly about his death, until it struck me after reading this: I get those pangs of grief whenever I see one of those techno-images: John-John saluting his father's casket is probably the most powerful one. But I think it's even been brought out that he didn't even remember those times, only through people telling him about it later.
What bothers me the most about it, in retrospect, is that I no longer have any control over it. The media pushes these powerful images into my field of vision in very pervasive ways. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not one of those "Aliens are transmitting secret messages into my brain" kooks. But what bothers me is, even if I turned off my computer and T.V., there were even billboards around Chicagoloand advertising one paper's or another T.V. New Network's coverage of the "tragedy." News stands between here and work had placards in big letters shouting "JFK, Jr. -- 1960 - 1999" There was no escaping this media event.
I'm not suggesting that we all become nutty kooks denouncing media and boycotting this and that. But I think that we need to take a very hard look at what we allow ourselves to be sucked into. In retrospect, I have no more reason to feel worse about JFK Jr.'s death than anyone else in the public eye. It's just how the media has presented it that has made my experience of it different.
And, I realize now that if I don't want to be manipulated, I'm going to need to get my head clear and figure out what I'm going to do about it.
flower of his generation? (Score:1)
I felt some emotion about this incident. Mainly because I can remember all the way back to JFK getting shot, presidents getting murdered tends to be upsetting to kids, and remember the other calameties of this family.
But I barely knew this kid existed, didn't follow the TV, didn't check it on the web. Was those past memories coming back. No big deal.
I'm insulated by living in Thailand, which does my perspective on affairs American lots of good, and it didn't get much coverage. Katz has some interesting things to say but he tends to assume the world revolves around the US. :-)
Turns out not to be the case.
Is this for real? (Score:1)
What? The moral leader of a generation? The inspiration for young America? What are these people talking about? JFK2 was a nice guy, a rich guy, and if you believe People, a good looking guy. But to make him into some kind of hero is nuts. Maybe I am too young to be part of this generation that supposedly idolized jfk, but I've never heard anybody ever say he was their idol. Moral leadership? He was just some guy who had a famous name and some money and wanted to be left alone and be recognized as more than just his father's son. A great guy, I'm sure, but he was nobody's hero.
Maybe I am just too young to see what the big deal is with all this kennedy stuff. I mean, Jackie was pretty hot in her day, and JFK was the president, and he got assassinated, and he was young, and then there are all the other relatives in politics; but I never understood this whole "Camelot" notion that people tried to push. I mean, they were just rich. I guess these days that's all that the British royalty are, but still, Camelot Schmamelot. Everyone tries to make it out like they are all the perfect Americans or something and I really don't see how the Kennedys are any different from any other rich family, except that they've got a lot of family members in politics.
These people saying that JFK was some kind of moral figure or idol are really crazy. Like, certifiably insane, as far as I'm concerned. He was really just some guy. Maybe they are remembering that kid saluting the casket or something, but even then, he's just a kid, not some kind of superhuman figure.
As for this:
How utterly dumb. When JFK was assassinated, it was the leader of the free world killed by a maniac in an era of Soviets and Nuclear fear. That was also 35 years ago (+/-). This is not the president of the United States we are talking about today. This is his son. And he seems to have done his best to distance himself from his father's image. The fate of the free world is not resting on his shoulders, and is not thrown into doubt because of his death. He was, in fact, "just some guy." Imagine for a second that Hinckley had succeeded and Reagan had been killed (I will restrain my Reagan comments for the moment). Yeah yeah yeah, the entire course of history would have been changed, but let's just say that it was his daughter that had died last week. Do you think there would be such an outpouring of "grief," as it seems to be called now? Would Patti Davis be "The moral leader of her generation," the "inspiration to all the young americans"? No, of course not, and neither should Kennedy.
CNN had a poll on their site, something to the effect of "Media coverage of JFK's death has been: A) Excessive B) Adequate C) Not enough," and about 80% said Excessive. CNN's top story, every day since then, has still been JFK. I mean, the families have already started to move on. Do we really need minute by minute coverage of his mass? What morons are running the show around here that think people actually care? Or, more to the point, who are the morons that really do care? He's gone. He was a nice guy. Idol? No. Moral Leader? No. We should all just be glad it wasn't our kid. There are much worse things to cry over than this. Deal.
Re:Humanity and grief in an over-connected world (Score:1)
There are two predominant type of reactions to this type of story. I share one of them -- initially shock/grief/sadness/reflection/whatever follow by resentment as the story continues to get all of the coverage, despite a total lack of information.
The second, and more prevalent, reaction is the total immersion in the story, and the reaction the Katz writes about above. To be honest, I'm totally perplexed by this type of reaction. I honestly don't "get" what drives people to hang on every frame/article related to the incident in question.
Moreover, the comparisons between Kennedy and Diana Spencer are a little overblown, though I fully expected them. Diana was a much more prominent public figure than Kennedy ever was... but wait, I forgot... he was a Kennedy® which automatically qualified him for godhood in America, it seems. Even still, I was sick of the Diana coverage, especially when a person truly deserving of admiration, Mother Theresa, died at the same time with barely a passing reference.
We always have been on our own (Score:2)
No offense to Katz, but we always have been on our own. Only in the early days of Usenet was the signal to noise ratio high enough that killfiles were only necessary on the really high volume groups.
The point of Free Press is that ALL the ideas can get out there. It is up to you and me to figure out which ideas are worth hacking on and which are in the realm of bovine scatology (thanks, Norm). Journalism thinks it has this gatekeeper function... it does not. The fact that it thinks it does means I no longer get my news from corporate entities based on this continent.
Yes, it's annoying when the Big Boys interrupt the ballgame to tell us that they haven't found John-John yet. Waste a few sheets of paper and write a formal protest and maybe they won't do it next time. (Sending email isn't enough; they're not required to keep it for the station logs for their FCC review. They are required to keep snailmail.) But other than that, vote with your feet for your news.
I read Neal Boortz [boortz.com], a noted Libertarian talk show host who always has pointers to the political outrage(s)-du-jour,
In short, stop whining, and vote with your feet.
(Kudos to Taco, this is the FIRST John-John story I've seen on
What the Coast Guard would have done for you (Score:1)
The CG would have taken a ship or two, ran zig zag patterns for 24 hours and if you had not been found? Well you would have been categorized lost at sea and be swimming with the fish. No 8 CG ships and no Navy destroyer with massive amounts of divers. No, no great tragedy for you justa stat.
Hangtime
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:3)
similar. I am a pilot btw. Aparently filing a flight plan
in NYC area will cause problems and get you really
screwed up on your routing. Flying as he did is rather
normal in NYC area. (Yeah he should've had flight
following though) As for survival gear, yeah it was
a mistake. It also wouldn't have made a difference
he died on hitting the water. As for night and visual
with few hours, come on. You know you've been
flying at night before you private license. Its required.
And its really not that difficult, and it was a route he knew,
along a very populated coast. Very easy to follow.
What I think he did was panic. He flew into a bank
of mist/clouds, then decided to go low to get under them
realized he was too low and not coming out of the
mist, so he tried to do a climbing turn. He stalled
and went into a spin. This is only my opinion. I think
this actually is a reasonable view though. And actually
is close to what you are trained to do. He just did it
a little to steeply. The things you point out would
not have saved him. More hours might have helped,
but you can't get those hours without flying. Catch-22.
-cpd
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:3)
Re:Pathetic (Score:2)
I was with you right up until this last part. It seems to contradict your argument. I'm not saying she wasn't, but how would any of us really know? Based on media coverage (and we all know how un-biased that always is, right?)
Re:Even JFK Jr.'s perceptions have been distorted (Score:4)
He said something along the lines of - after seeing the image over and over again, you start to think you remember something, I don't know for sure if I actually remember that.
I had a reaction that his status as a cultural icon was invented about an hour after the first reports of his death. Sure, he was famous for being famous, I don't remember anything profound he ever said or did. He was good looking, glamorous and had a famous family. So its news when he dies (christ, he's only a couple years older than I am, I was a year old when his father was shot).
But man, I can't figure out what the overreaction in the media is all about. He's suddenly the voice of our generation and all that. Sheesh. Its a damn shame and all that this guy bit it like this, but lets keep a little perspective. Its *not* like JFK being shot all over again. That was the news story of the century. This is tragic and newsworthy, but not of the same magnitude.
I'm not confinced that technology did this as much as our society of personality worship. Sure, it makes it worse that information and images travel faster, there are more 24 hour cable news networks that dive all over this. But I think the root of this is that for some reason Americans gravitate to hero worship, and if a close-enough hero dies, it is sufficient motivation to elevate him/her beyond what they really represented so that we can enjoy bashing our chests about how much of a loss this is and how its a blow to an entire freaking generation. Bleah.
Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score:4)
Not everyone in this country is affected by these deaths. But, the media likes to do polls and gather statistics on what impact this is having on us. One of my favorite things that comes up after something like this is the whole Baby Boomer vs. Generation X thing. It's commonly known that most Baby Boomers remember where they were when JRK was shot. Most of us Generation Xers have no clue where we were when Reagan was shot. But, most of us remember where we were when we heard the news about the Challenger accident. (To me, it was devastating.)
Does this make us apathetic? No. Does it show how the media tries to stereotype everyone? Yes. That is what they are trying to do in this situation. It's easier to label than to define.
I don't watch television, so ... (Score:2)
- Unplug television from wall outlet.
- Place wire clippers in preferred hand.
- Firmly grasp power cord in other hand.
- Clip the plug from the cord.
Your television has now been restored to its best possible operating condition.-russ
Re:What!? (Score:5)
What!? (Score:3)
And another thing (Score:2)
There's also the small matter of MT going in to help the poor in areas where "population explosion" is a meaningful phrase, while steadfastly maintaining that birth control Is A Sin.
Things like that. I can understand why it would be "controversial" to continue to apply what is essentially a band-aid solution to the problem, even if it is at great personal cost.
*shrug*
For that matter, some of the Catholic saints are not-so-saintly when you THINK about what they did. And the whole "virgin martyr" thing is ridiculous -- if a girl jumped out of a window to avoid being raped today, and died, we'd have sympathy but we wouldn't call her a martyr.
Why Columbine is different (Score:3)
[Disclaimer: I've got my own problems with the Columbine coverage, as those who read my earlier post on the thread are probably aware.]
First, in defense of JonKatz, he was covering an angle of the Columbine tragedy that a lot of people were trying very very hard to ignore.
Secondly, a hell of a lot more than three people died. Third, the perpetrators weren't already celebrities. Fourth, people like Diana Spencer and John F. Kennedy Jr. were only celebrities by marriage and birth respectively.
Over-reported stories about JFK Jr, Princess Di, JonBenet Ramsey, etc. are pure celebrity gossip disguised as news. Over-reported stories about Columbine, about cases like Matthew Shephard's murder, even about something like PanAm 103, are over-reported to draw attention to possible underlying causes of the specific over-reported tragedy.
It does get tiring, yes, and I do get sick of the "How could this have happened HERE?" but there is an underlying nobility of purpose that is just not present in reports of most celebrity deaths. Now, if something useful like MADD and SADD drumming up a lot of publicity after Princess Di's death had happened, that could have crossed the line back over. And there are cases that are a mixture of the two -- deaths of popular entertainers, especially musicians, due to drugs, DWI, or more recently, AIDS, sometimes are symbolized as an awareness of the problem. And this is a good thing.
The coverage of Columbine, especially with all the angles it eventually took, blew the lid off of a lot of problems. Endless coverage of celebrity deaths without much about the underlying cause is just a lot of mental masturbation.
You're only right if ... (Score:3)
... you consider "computer" to be a necessary and therefore unstated modifier of "nerd."
There's a fair amount of "English nerds" (like me) on
The point Katz is trying to make, as I see it, is that over time, technology has made it increasingly easier to saturate the media with non-stories. Meanwhile, "stuff that matters" is getting ignored. THAT matters, in and of itself.
An excess of symbolism (Score:5)
This reminds me of Kurt Cobain's death. A group of students in my Mass Media and Popular Culture class were discussing it (this is right after it happened), and in comes our professor announcing to all and sundry that John Lennon's death was much more meaningful and that how sorry she felt for our generation because we didn't have that kind of hero.
Um, pardon me, but I like Lennon's music much better than Cobain's, anyhow. And Kurt Cobain ain't no cultural icon, folks -- he was arguably a talented musician (though not my style), but he was no hero of mine.
Freddie Mercury's death affected me much more, though he doesn't belong to "my" generation. Queen wasn't exactly popular here post-1981 except among Highlander fans, but because suddenly AIDS is this big trendy thing and is how Mercury died, we get silliness in the same music press that used to hate Queen about how they were kind of cool after all for inspiring Guns N Roses.
That was annoying, sure, but to have the same press (and this time, with the addition of non-music folks) falling all over itself praising Kurt Cobain, who if nothing else hadn't lived long enough to create as extensive a collection of music as Freddie Mercury had, was just ridiculous.
I don't see why it's so necessary to take snapshot "icons" of a generation, anyhow. It's not like they prove anything. Lucille Ball didn't represent my mother's family growing up.
And it's all very sweet to go on and on about Camelot and the end of the era of innocence, but what this ignores is that for many if not most people, the "innocence" had been lost long ago. My parents have stories from their days growing up about mentally ill family members that they had to "hide" from their friends, hard times due to strikes, being told "your parents don't love you because they won't send you to Catholic school," putting up with "dumb Polak" slurs despite being the class valedictorian, etc.
Camelot? Yeah, sure. But what about the masses outside the gates?
It's the same thing that (for me) made the Littleton coverage so damned annoying -- "How could this happen here, in our nice white upper-middle-class suburb? We're Nice People! We are the American Dream!"
Feh. America needs to stop dreaming and wake up. The "American Dream" has never once included everyone. At best, it creates isolated pockets of "haves" that promote the illusion that everyone's got it that good. *sigh*
Culture of Celebrity (Score:2)
fascinated with celebrities because these
celebrities appear in the media.
Suppose I own a magazine. Being a good
capitalist, I want to maximize the number of
issues that I sell. I don't think it's a big
leap to see that it's in my self-interest to
do everything I can to identify certain people
as inherently newsworthy and persuade my
readers that they should consume any material
related to these newsworthies. Whether this
newsworthiness is somehow defensible (in the
case of politicians, artists, technologists)
or not (pop musicians, glitterati) is immaterial.
So, if I can persuade you that JFKJ is a person
you should be interested in because he's
good-looking, rich and the son of a former
president, I can make more money. If throwing
in meaningless adjectives like "hero to a
generation" pumps the bottom line, so much the
better.
People end up caring about these media projections
because their peers do, because there are
billion-dollar companies trying to get them to
care and because it distracts them from their
lives (who of us has a life that can match the
non-stop excitement of that of a media-mediated
celebrity?).
I believe that this issue is at heart a
sociological, not a technical, issue. The
newspapers in my city (Globe & Mail, Toronto Star,
Toronto Sun and National Post) all devoted
above-the-fold pictures and headlines to the
JFKJ incident for several days.
SS
You can never be too rich, thin or cynical.