Current anxieties about the media…What are they?

As with anxiety over anything media anxieties are broad and can’t really be pinned down to a few bullet points, as every person has individual worries. However, there are a few anxieties regarding the media that we all seem to have in common, the first being gender representation. Their has always been stereotypical ideologies in advertising media, whether it’s the hulking man representing “Old Spice” body spray or the airbrushed, synthetic women used to sell anything from shoes to makeup to liposuction we have all seen examples of advertising designed to make us desire the product via our envy of the subject of the advertisement.

Another common social anxiety revolving around the media is the misrepresentation of individuals

or groups. Time and time again shows like A Current Affair and 60 Minutes show people in a far more negative light than necessary. For example in 2012 A Current Affair ran a story on a mall in Castle Hill, NSW. The story focused on the high percentage of Asian store owners and spun the story to suggest that the Asian population where “kicking out” Australian business owners. The story was slammed as racist and some called for a formal apology from the producers after they deemed the program to be inciting unnecessary unrest in the community (Source). Unfortunately this is not uncommon in current affairs styled programs as it is a quick way to boost viewer numbers and, in return, revenue. The misrepresentation of groups leads to a untrusting and nervous society where people don’t feel fairly portrayed in the eyes of their peers. Another example is a piece again produced by A Current Affair but this time it was focused on “graffiti gangs” in Australia. The story had interviews with local kids at a skatepark, not actual graffiti artists. interviews were also filmed with anti-graffiti task-force officers and council members but the members of the graffiti community were barely represented at all. The clips in the program showed young people “tagging” trains and making hand gestures which the story spun as “gang-related”. Many members of the creative graffiti community, the ones that spray murals not scribbles, felt targeted by the piece. One member of OzHipHop.com, a forum that houses a large number of graffiti artists, said “I hate ACA and Today Tonight. The standard of journalism is poor and the viewers who encourage it are worse. If they don’t have minorities to bag the shit out of they just fleece the youth”. (Source)

It is misrepresentations such as this that lead to a dejected society, particularly those belonging to niche groups. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like any real change is imminent, with the big news outlets continuing to post stories that alienate particular people or groups of people. All we can do as future contributors to the media is to do our best to include all perspectives, limit our use of hearsay and check our facts before posting anything.

Feel free to vote on my poll while you’re here!