Because that is categorically impossible. It’s simply not going to happen. Listen to what you’re proposing: That they define the narrative for society. As if society is ever going to let them.
This is akin to saying the media exists as more than a artificial distinction from the public at large. If it’s a public stance, then the “media” which only ever appears as a single entity at the end of a cartoonist’s pen, is going to process it. Technically this right here is “media.”
I do think it’s possible to be pragmatic. That’s still a thing. The idea that everything must be philosophically and rigorously defensible goes well beyond practical purpose. We can talk about utopias until we’re blue in the face, but Missouri is a real place.
The opening of the video (with the other student reporter/photographer) looks very much like an angry mob to me. We clearly see that student being man-handled and shoved.
The last bit of the video shows an expanding ring of students as they push out from the camp of tents. Who are they to decide who gets to be inside the circle? Who are they to discriminate which students are permitted and which are not?
No, I am proposing that they define their own narrative. That’s pretty realistic expectation for rich white men. The G8 seem to be quite capable of complete lock down of public spaces. Or the Olympics which here in London were rather successful of complete lock down of public space.
This has nothing to do with Utopia, and everything to do with owning your image, which is a hotly fought over and very real thing, right here and right now.
When rich, powerful people stop manipulating their image then we can go back to your stance of categorical impossibilities.
That said, especially with regards to pragmatism, it may be wise for the students to develop an organized response to unwanted media. They can form a committee for just standing there, obstructing the view, if they want, and develop prepared methods for interacting with reporters. That way debacles like this don’t happen (or they are better prepared when they do).
Cop Watch tactics come to mind. In Cop Watch teams, they usually have three people dedicated to certain roles–one to film, one to interface with police, and one to film the other two.
Would he have been pushed out if he had been there not as a journalist, but as a person? Seems unlikely. He’s not there as himself, he’s there as a representative of something/one else. Plus, we don’t know what sort of pressure the encampment was under prior to this event. So there is that longer view as well.
But I understand that his treatment was out of line, however. Fair enough on that point. Like I said above, I’m not convinced either way on this so far. I do think, as @nojaboja, it’s more complicated than an angry mob beating up some poor journalist.
So then, the media gets to decide about everything in our society? When that media is by and large controlled by corporations, that’s not a good thing. I don’t think this group is insisting that they get to define society, but that they define themselves and get to state their case to the public at large, rather than being defined in a way that ignores their basic humanity. The notion that the media is somehow a neutral arbiter as it functions today is entirely wrong and a dangerous thing to believe. Because it’s just not true.
So they’re not going to do that anyway? They’re not going to tell the story from their own perspective? Please enlighten me as to how this proposal is remotely useful or interesting, or diverges from the current reality in any way.
What does that mean? That people can’t talk about you except in ways that you approve? Then I know what side I’m on and fuck that whole mess.
Meaning that when the powerful stop exercising and using their power? Good luck with that. You live in a fantasy.
What is the media? What practical measures are necessary that avoid the scourge of state-run media and censorship?
It has zero to do with neutrality and everything to do with replacing an awful system with, what absolutely sounds like an even worse one. You know I don’t believe that the media is neutral. So I have no idea how you read that into my remarks.
No, meaning that if people would be fighting the organisers of the G8 to ensure that 1st Amendment rights are upheld, that would be interesting and worthwhile. I would like to see the same journalist and all the people so exercised by the students refusal to engage with the media (used in the plural) lean on a disrespect the personal space of Security protecting a G8 summit or various other similar events.
Making a stance against people who are making a stance, because they have been discriminated against is easy and cheap, standing up to power might be more meaningful…
Yeah, see- I’m not sure there. At the end, the woman approaches the man filming, and without asking who he is or what his motives might be, calls for “muscle” to remove him. I mean, I suppose he could be wearing a giant “press” sign that we don’t know about, but even then, he doesn’t seem to be the focus of the earlier angst.
I’d question the choice to put the camp up on the public lawn like they did- might they have taken over the admin building? Sat-in in the provost’s office? I dunno. Maybe it’s the best they could do.
Regardless, going out in public means that you are in public and thus have no right to privacy. You can and will have your picture taken, and there’s not much you can do about it. Shouting that you don’t want it to happen is just shouting- nothing more.
These protesters are “engaging critically” with the idea that free speech should be a government-granted right applied equally to everyone by the 1st Amendment.
I think that’s great, because there’s never been real free speech, and in fact the ability to speak is always something that has to be fought for, often at the expense of someone else’s speech. The ideal of the 1st Amendment presupposes a balance of power between people. Meanwhile in the real world power is very unequally distributed, and many effectively cannot speak freely. The 1st Amendment and the “free press” do little if anything to correct this.
So I think philosophically they’re on the right track, but their implementation of this criticism is painfully bad. It’s obvious they’re trying to feel powerful, but they’re making a show of power against someone who doesn’t really have much power either. If they were putting the same moves on cops or administrators, it would be brave and cool, but against a student reporter it feels like bullying.
That said, I think it’s sometimes entirely reasonable to muscle journalists away from situations in protests. For example, if someone is having a medical emergency, they may not want pictures of their treatment, and are probably not in a position to move somewhere private to avoid the media. Or if someone has committed a crime and does not want to be identified, it’s pretty reasonable to stop the media from acting as surveillance-by-proxy. Since there’s an encampment involved, I can even see how the media might need to be forced away from tents, if cameras were intruding on people’s personal living space. So I don’t think the principle is unreasonable at all, it was just clumsily executed in this case.
We have a corporate run media, which frankly isn’t much better. Of course, the media is not just defined by that, but the mass media for sure sets standard practice for much of the rest of the non-corporate media. Just look at how toothless NPR has become in recent years. When the majority still depend on the corporate media for their information, that’s a problem.
I know you’re not suggesting that the media is neutral, but that’s the ideology. I’m not sure that shrugging our shoulders or yelling “first amendment” does any good here (not that you’re doing that necessarily). I don’t think that people’s voices being elevated about the corporate drone noise is “a worse system” though. How can it get worse than what it is now? Because state run media can mean the media in Russia or the media in Britain.
Spot on. The protestors were caught off guard by quickly unfolding events. They were making a local stance and their strategy was directed to deal with local press. I doubt any of them were prepared for how events would unfold.
The Mizzou Team & Coach’s stance and support was most likely very unexpected (when has an American Football team last taken a political stance), highly unlikely that they were prepared to be catapulted into the limelight of the national press.
The “private spaces” on a university campus (particularly on a “public” university campus ) are few and far between. If you’re a student and want to escape the media once it’s discovered a story-- good luck. So, there’s a little bit of that mixed in with a proprietary interest in the spirit of revolution.
Why are you trying to provide context for an angry mob? Large group of people + significant amount of paranoia and mistrust = mob rule. It’s not nearly as complicated as you’re making it out to be.
They didn’t bother to figure out what kind of media he was, or have any sort of dialogue with him, or pepper him with Malcolm X speeches and pithy anti-corporatist vibes.
It’s only newsworthy because the large group of people are demanding tolerance and respect and are shown in a video not giving respect or showing tolerance (and, more explicitly, violating the First Amendment.)
The demonstrators have set up their encampment in a public space, an open-air campus quad. The reporter has just as much right to be there and do his (Constitutionally protected) thing as do the protesters. This media studies prof could have used this as an educational opportunity about freedom of the press for all concerned (including the reporter), but instead she succumbed to thuggery and a desire for mob adulation by calling for “muscle”.
There are plenty of non-public or semi-public places on or near a college campus that demonstrators can occupy and turn into effective and definitely required safe spaces for themselves. But (as is often the case with young progressive protesters) a subset are more interested in showboating on their own terms, whatever damage and ridicule it brings to their own worthy cause.
I like how you engaged his points in support of that statement.
What about that Hungarian journalist who tripped the old man and kicked the little girl in the chest? Can we get you down to like, 99%?
In all seriousness, I remember occupying Troy Davis Park in Atlanta and waking up at 3 in the morning to lights outside my tent. Walked out, it was a reporter there with a camera interviewing some crackhead. Later that day, I saw that same interview on the news and they were saying it was an interview with one of the protestors. That journalist was pretty much ejected every time they came back to the park.
This happened over and over again, but when police were beating people I saw the camermen turn their cameras off and step behind police lines. They were there to tell the story that Kasim Reed wanted to tell.
