Media Flaws

It’s always great finding appropriate neologisms such as Liquid Modernity, courtesy of Zygmunt Bauman. How wonderful it all sounds – fluid, non-committal, careless, care-free, spontaneous, fast-paced, obligationless – are my interpretations.
 
For purposes of this blog I’ll be dense - discard the human element of the concept - and focus on Liquid Modernity’s most basic traits such as Facebook, blogs and various emerging social networking tools, which threaten to deaden more than just Youth Culture or ‘YUC’ (Eaton, 2005), as they filter through to older generations and most worryingly to editors and senior media figures. I understand the excitement at which these technologies are embraced. I too, in 2007 in Durban, once presented an hour long paper on the liquidity of media networks – simply googling someone, checking their blog or their myspace pages for their details and even browsing through their publicly available online notes and blogs. It was exciting at the time. Getting in touch with once-perceived-as-untouchables was the compendium of the greatness of technology. However, my optimism faded as I grew aware that my earlier excitement was the very same killer of a once perceived character novelty, as one-by-one editors and leading figures became liquid idols and merely a click away from you. Before I proceed with more disadvantages I’d like to start with a positive spin-off, Barack Obama, where “Social networks and Twitter messages may have helped… but analysts agree it was the Democrat's impressive online organisation and internet fund-raising that fuelled his victory over Republican John McCain in Tuesday's election”(AFP, 2008).

Now back to the grueling negative ad hominem agenda I was pursing earlier.

I highly recommend that many editors and former editors stay clear from these liquid mediums asap – Justice Malala (ST), Ferial Hafajjee (MG), Mathatha Tsedu (CP) to name a few. The advent of the column and editor-as-columnist was fine, but editor-as-blogger is an archetypal concept of pushing luck too far. I would’ve also mentioned Wits’ Prof Anton Harber however I have realised that he has ironically erased half of his latest 2008 blog posts – the Prof was probably pre-enlightened on the consequences of mixing seniority and liquid modernity = instant discreditment. Prof Harber’s laundry or laundered blog can be found at: http://www.big.co.za/wordpress/?cat=1

I respect all editors I refer to herein however one has to wonder whether or not they have stopped to think about the effect of their sunshine-like online presence? I’ll take it one step further and let their blogs/words drive my point home:

“Did Shilowa think the ANC under the leadership of the kangaman under the shower with a bottle of baby oil in hand, the same leadership he was lambasting as unprincipled, had meant it when they said the removal of Thabo Mbeki the dictator has opened space for robust debate within the movement? Puleeze, give us a break.” – Mathatha Tsedu, City Press - http://blogs.citypress.co.za/ViewComments.aspx?mid=10&blogid=8

“…The rot set in when you were the ANC’s president… Otherwise do us all in this noble movement a favour. Shut up.You bemoan the utterances of the president of the ANC Youth League. Yes, he has outraged the country. But it is worth noting that when Archbishop Desmond Tutu took you on about the culture of intolerance that you established in the ANC, you put him down with the injunction that he has never been a member of the ANC. It is notable that in all your time in the ANC you have never been a member of the ANC Youth League or Youth Section in exile.” – Justice Malala pretending to be Jacob Zuma replying to Mbeki’s letter, ST, http://www.thetimes.co.za/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=876139

“… He is a peddler of lies and of tiny bits of gossip, usually incorrect, gleaned from coffee-shop chit-chat. That is the currency of his book on the intellectual traditions of President Mbeki, which should really be retitled Inside My Bitter Heart: A Guide to My Tortured Soul, a biography of Ronald Suresh Roberts. Many might be impressed by his turn of phrase, but you’ll soon tire of it; there is nothing beyond the bitter heart; little but inane point-scoring; personal puffery rather than a clever take on society.” – Ferial Haffajee, MG, http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/ferialhaffajee/2007/11/15/how-dare-he/

The only editor out there who remotely has a grip on how to use these liquid technologies is the Daily Dispatch’s Andrew Trench with his light social commentary and current affairs analysis. http://blogs.dispatch.co.za/trench/

But there’s still something I can’t quite put my finger on with regards to editors or newsmakers hosting ‘personal’ blogs. Oil and water combo-like I know. The moment you open your personal self up like this (via personal blogs) as an editor – your weaknesses are out there. Editors-as-bloggers provide a solid point of reference for anyone who has ever tried to discredit a news organization by pursuing the school of thought that states that you cannot as a journalist avoid your preconceived notions and socialization when trying to report on any matter – the angle you choose for a story and your wording are all derivatives of the individual’s own personal experiences and no journalist or editor is an exception to this occurance. By opening yourself up, as an editor, to become a blogger and start expressing ‘the way you see it’ you can be classified as committing career suicide.