Media Musings: Journalism creates and batters images
Modern media live on images. We can’t sit around the desk with the captains of industry or movie stars or political leaders, so we see and hear them vicariously. Some are our heroes; some become our villains.
Images can be altered, though, and can move from the hall of heroes to the hall of villains in a brief lifetime. And some historians – not the reputable ones – do revisionist history to “clean up” the images of robber barons of yesteryear and on Wall Street today.
Journalism creates and batters images and it’s interesting to watch the process now.
Take Wal-Mart, our low-price champion. Those low prices are very real and while the “Wal-Mart cheer” may be shouted at stockholders meetings, they are possible because the nation’s biggest employer doesn’t pay wages that would give a single parent with two children working full time the money to supply the family’s basic needs. The federal government has estimated the minimum wage should be around $11 an hour. Wal-Mart pays $6.25.
As California begins an investigation into the company, hundreds of lawsuits charging the firm with gender discrimination in management and forcing workers to work “off the clock” are being filed all over the country.
Both PBS and NPR, along with serious Internet sites, are now reporting the situation. Then there’s the ripple effect. With literally thousands of suppliers forced to meet Wal-Marts’ demands for lowest possible prices, the suppression of wages rolls through the economy. Wal-Mart gives real meaning to the phrase “the working poor.”
Then there’s the image of President Bush, warrior on an aircraft carrier and now fighting to help with the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly. Yet the bill would not take effect until 2006, long after the election, but would give him bragging rights now. And the tax cuts depend on how rich you are and it’s obvious that richer is much better than average. Again, it’s the image.
Dare we bring up again dear Martha Stewart, who still says she doesn’t understand why so many people are delighted by her downfall? It’s a real downfall, even if you love her. When her obit is published in the New York Times, you can bet the farm her indictments will be there along with a truly admirable building of a great public company. To allow her high-priced lawyers to claim it’s chauvinism is ridiculous, at best. Stewart may still be in Wall Street’s halls of fame, but she’s tarnished forever.
Ah, images. Perhaps the one that seems to be so insensitive was the image of what a man is as American Movie Classics – a channel is obvious decline – devoted hours and hours to war movies and tough westerns to celebrate – that’s correct, celebrate -?Father’s Day.
There are millions of fathers who are kind, loving, gentle and understanding role models to their children. They coach Little Leagues and support humane shelters for animals, teaching their children that kindness and caring and sharing aren’t signs of male weakness, but of the strength of character.
Shaping images is a full-time task for public relations practitioners, spin merchants, mega-media companies, and Wall Street, to be sure. From the early days of Hollywood, it was learned that publicity agents and corrupt gossip columnists could mask many a stars’ sexual preference or problems.
Today, government uses all of those techniques, too, like a million dollar “movie set” to brief the world on our war with Iraq or the questionable rescue of Private Lynch. It shouldn’t be lost on you that CBS is fighting to get the rights to her story. The image is just too tempting to make money with high ratings.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)