The Role of Medium, and Making Matter Matter
Proactive vs. Reactive Media.
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So what’s the point?
That’s not a rhetorical question — what is the point of media today (Medium, Matter) when it comes to covering racial unrest, social inequity, and a system whose very DNA is corrupted by prejudice and inherent inequality?
Where is the news? Where are the stories? Where are the storytellers? Most importantly, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
I believe part of the responsibility of readers and writers on Medium is to hold one another accountable.
So here you go.
Old Media has a tendency to rush to the scene and set up shop, using whatever chaotic backdrop as just that — a backdrop — from which to report live. CNN is great at this. They rushed to Ferguson and reported what essentially could have been reported from their studio, but with protesters in the background instead of a green-screen.
They didn’t investigate anything. They didn’t ask the hard questions. They reacted to a story that had already unfolded, missing the forest through the trees.
By this point the media is feasting, creating Race Porn, screaming to anyone who will listen, “Look! Everybody look! Protests! White vs. Black! Black vs. The Police! Look at us! We’re covering it!”
It is 100% reactionary.
In reality, they missed the story. Let’s break it down:
The Wall Street Journal did a piece about multiple police precincts refusing to report to the FBI their findings on how many people their officers had killed. This demonstrates a severe lack of accountability, a disconnect between the police and the people. The police keep precise numbers when it comes to their officers being shot. They don’t, however, feel that precision deserves reciprocity when it comes to civilians being killed by their officers.
This is a problem. Proactive media would explore this, asking how we, as a society, are allowing entire precincts to not report exactly how many civilians are being killed by police to the FBI. Proactive media would investigate, asking hard questions to police forces that do not like being challenged. Proactive media would confront the Cleveland police officer’s union, pushing back, forcing them to answer why they are more concerned with Cleveland Brown’s players showing solidarity with victims of police brutality than they are with demonstrating a connection with the community they’re sworn to protect and serve.
This is our job.
There’s the recent Pew Report showing the median income of white households is 13 times higher than the median income of black households. And the disparity is trajecting upward, increasing as the economy recovers. How did this happen? Why is this happening? How is the system we’ve created perpetuating this? What is the connection between poverty and Ferguson? What is the connection between low-income communities and distrust of the police in their communities? Proactive media would explore each of these things, investigating, pushing, prodding, deeper and deeper until we begin to approach the root causes of the effect that is Ferguson.
And make no mistake about it — Ferguson is an effect. Ferguson is a reaction. The protests across the country are reactions. Proactive media would investigate not the protests themselves, but what exactly we are reacting to.
Medium is custom-built for these types of stories. Medium cannot and will not be censored, and its members are spread across the country, offering minute glimpses into an America that is hidden from mainstream media.
What do we get instead? “What Happened When I Tweeted ‘White Men Have It So Hard.’” Matter actually published this, a story that is pure Race Porn, practically begging for clicks (which, I’m guessing, was very successful) and relevancy. It screams “Look at us! We’re here too!” This story takes a real issue that is affecting real people, and makes it about them. “Look what happened to me! Here’s how people responded to me! Look at the reaction I got!”
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
Matter, find a mirror. Now look closely at what you see, and repeat this phrase:
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
This is so much deeper than the surface you choose to skim. We are witnessing the results of institutional racism. Let’s investigate the system. Explore the system. Nothing is off limits. Racial unrest, police brutality, financial inequity, complaints to departments going unheard, poverty, family, single-parent households (yeah, I said it), crime — the problem is systemic, thus meaning the solution will be found within that system.
We can choose to fix it, working within the system. We can choose to scrap it, and rebuild. Or we can burn the whole thing down for the insurance money. Either way, the exploration of these systems is where social and communal growth will occur.
Matter — do you want to live up to your namesake? You want to be relevant? Stop trying too hard. Quit grasping for clicks and seek truth. The clicks will come.
Medium — we can do this. We can go deeper and deeper until we expose the systemic flaws upon which our entire system is built. We can expose them, repair them, fix them. But we must be proactive. We can seek out and find the stories before they blow up. We can search for inherant flaws before they’re exposed on CNN. We can explore problems and find answers. We can change things, because we can’t be censored. We can do this.
