Unfortunately, this rule also applies to the media industry, where complex, earth-rattling stories are distilled into 2-minute ‘good guys vs. bad guys’ news pieces that won’t upset your grandmother’s 6pm TV dinner. Here, unlike in photography, simplicity doesn’t help accentuate the nuances of a news story. Instead, it ruthlessly decapitates it, along with any intelligent detail that may have once been present.
While some assume that the sub-par content of mainstream news media is the result of a conspiracy to control minds and bring on the inevitable apocalypse, the reality is that the news industry is governed by the need for simple, sensationalist stories which rather than telling an audience what to think, appeal to their prejudices and reinforce what they already believe. This keeps audiences coming back for more and thus drives profits. Essentially, the media industry is just that: an industry and each competing news outlet has a client base to satisfy.
When it comes those who actually produce news content, aka journalists, many are well-intended, slightly crazy individuals who usually enter the industry with a reasonable amount of idealism. However, like aid work, art and democracy, the media industry usually forces these people to put their ideals aside in order to cater to the industry that pays them their monthly cheque. This often means putting complexity and some degree of sensitivity aside in order to present a story in a way that will appeal to those aforementioned grandmothers everywhere.
For example, a journalist who has just risked life and limb exploring first-hand the complex intersection of tribal and sectarian divisions in Iraq will have to distil his or her week’s worth of research into a two-minute video piece that, rather than explaining intricacies, reduces the whole issue into a Sunni vs. Shia/historic enemies-style piece because, well, that’s all the editors and their mass audiences have time for.
Ultimately, the ideals of humanising rather than demonising, exploring layers and not simplifying and storytelling out of conviction rather than out of editorial demand are often left on the dusty, 45-degree roadside because that’s what the industry demands. As a result, journalism today is often a race to the bottom to see who can get the craziest, most tragic, most stupefying story out there in order to secure the interest of an editor and drive today’s ADHD internet audience to actually give 32.35 seconds to your story before flipping back to YouTube animal videos and porn.
The condition of the modern news media industry is perhaps no more apparent than in stories about the Arab world and the broader Middle East. For a journalist, finding a marketable story in the Middle East is like shooting fish in a barrel. An editor contacts a journalist and effectively says “okay, we need interviews with fat, bearded dudes firing guns in the air because it is an essential visual element in our story of the furthering sectarian divide in the Middle East.” Given that there are a few too many fat bearded guys firing guns in the region, a journalist calls up his favourite militia commander, grabs a cameraman, shoots a few minutes of video and sends it off to be published. Mission accomplished.
Of course, more stock images of fat, bearded guys firing guns in the air does nothing to further your grandmother’s (or for that matter, your own) well-informed understanding of the wars in Iraq, Syria, or for that matter, Azawad. But at least she will get the point: the Middle East is scary, dark, violent, and dangerous but the kids are really adorable. When they’re not firing guns in the air, anyway.
Mission accomplished. The editor has delivered his product, your grandmother is scared and wants to know why some of those ‘men’ are robed from head to foot and say little and some of them have beards and shoot guns. But then I suppose she’ll just have to tune in tomorrow night if she wants to find out why.
