Born and raised in New Jersey, I am
always scouring my favorite Jersey papers to help facilitate thought in my
contributions to our blog for History 243. Recently I came across a brief
article documenting a stabbing in Asbury Park. Asbury Park is home to much more
than the making of my man Bruce Springsteen, despite what outsiders to the fine
state may think. Asbury Park has grown over time to become one of the state's
more dangerous cities, (excluding the big three: Camden, Trenton, and Newark).
Crime, stemming from gang-related activity runs rampant throughout the historic
town, and the brief rundown of the particular stabbing by the
paper's media man is nothing new.
The reason the article got the ball
rolling for me is because of what has been learned in our course this semester.
Specifically, the article brings to mind the Travon Martin controversy. For
sake of space, I have attached an article describing the tragic event in
entirety. My mind relocated back to that night in Central Florida because of
the people involved. Martin was an African-American teenager, who provoked just
enough tension to solicit a fatal pull to the trigger. The stabbing that took
place in Asbury Park did not leave anyone dead, but the simplicity in which the
story is written is disturbing.
The media, especially with the rise
of social media, does an effective (albeit not always productive) job of either
burying history or making its events loud and shiny. In this particular case, a
stabbing, likely gang-related and possibly racially charged, will disappear
into the website's archives, likely not to be revisited within a week. Because
newspapers and the internet are effective tools for engaging society, are
newspapers at risk of undermining progress, especially on the local level? In
the case of Travon Martin, which circulated onto the national
level, discomfort, fear, and sobering accounts of life were continually taken
up until the jury was out. Do newspapers have the ability to spark such
profound reactions within the lives of their local audience?
I think that the question is ultimately met with the
glaring reality of how newspapers have to act in 2014. With advancing
trends in social media and the progress of the internet, overwhelming challenges
await the local story of yet another stabbing, which must elicit a reaction
other than a lick of the finger and a turn of the page. Consistently
ineffective newspapers do have an ability, and should take such windows of
opportunity to cause more and more reaction on a local level, in order to
elicit positive, and permanent change.
Do newspapers have the ability to spark such profound reactions within the lives of their local audience? For me the answer is a clear yes. Whether we like it or not, the media has the ability to control what stories we are exposed to and therefore, what we deem as important. The media has the power to control what we care about. This is why it is incredibility important that the media be unbiased in what they report. This does not happen however. Newspapers and other news outlets tend to print things that they know that white audiences will like to read or care about. For example, when a pretty white girl goes missing national and local news sources report around the clock with information about the case. This sends the message to the reader that this is important because it is published. However, we never see stories of minorities who go missing.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct in saying that local newspapers have an opportunity to facilitate positive change. As we have learned from class, much of the effectiveness during the Movement stemmed from grassroots demands for change. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a good example of this. Instead of trying to tackle the biggest issue of social injustice at once, just focusing on the bus system in Montgomery proved to be an effective way to facilitate larger change by tackling a smaller issue. I think that the same principal is true for the way that local newspapers function. By informing their audience about the real issues that plague their cities, communities will become more informed and hopefully impassioned to want to tackle the issues in their community. If each city could strive for positive change, the larger issue of discrimination and racism will be addressed.