Everyone Is Creating Media These Days, but Who Can You Trust?
You can't get away from the media. Everyone's talking about the media. Athletes complain about the media. Politicians criticize the media. Members of the media have feuds with other members of the media.
Heck, even I'm the media. That's right, me, a 30-year-old guy sitting in his apartment typing on a laptop.
I'm the media!
And since that's the case, you now have a decision to make. With whom do you group me? Am I more like Buzzfeed or The Atlantic? Am I TMZ or Gawker or the NFL Network or CBS News or MTV?
Do you trust me? Will you group me with those media sources you trust or those you don't?
Chances are you're making that decision subconsciously, based on your instinct, and if your Facebook friends have also shared this article. In fact, aren't Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat the media?
They are? Congratulations! You're the media!
Think about it this way: 21st-century Americans have exponentially more news and entertainment options than at any other time in human history. Our brains have not yet evolved to process all the messages that fly at us.
Pivot TV and Participant Media (TakePart's parent company) are initiating the Eyes Wide Open campaign in an attempt to help millennials sort out the information overload and make intelligent, conscious decisions about media.
Currently, four out of five individuals say that it's tough to know which news sources are trustworthy, and more than half are not always confident in the accuracy of the news they share online. (A quick look at Literallyunbelievable.org verifies that scores of Americans are frequently confused about what's true and what isn't.)
As you can see, we have a lot of work to do. The campaign kicked off with Eyes Wide Open: This is Media, a special airing on September 11 on Pivot, sharing strategies for analyzing and understanding the complex media landscape. Check out Pivot's schedule for more airtimes.
As with most modern issues, there are pros and cons to participation. You're consistently dealing with literally hundreds of different media portals, unless you want to go completely off the grid and live in the forest with no electricity or Internet connection. Any takers? Good, because that forest is probably on fire right now.
Take the Eyes Wide Open Quiz to determine if you are media and privacy savvy. I scored 8 out of 10, so even us supposedly "media-literate" online writers don't know everything.
If you're inclined, you can put pressure on the media to produce the most accurate reporting as possible and acknowledge any biases. The organization, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), has helpful action items to make this possible. Basically, if you've ever wanted to call up a network anchor that you love to hate, FAIR has the contact information for you to make that happen.
"But, wait a minute," you're asking right now, "aren't Participant Media and Pivot just another collection of wealthy media fat cats, looking to make a quick buck by selling Mountain Dew and Chillows to the impressionable youth of America?"
The truth is, we want to give you the tools to make up your own mind. That's why the Eyes Wide Open campaign also includes a comprehensive overview of Pivot's advertising policy, to be as transparent as possible about the advertising that appears on the network, and the advertisers that we just won't do business with.
Have an opinion about all this? Why not blog about it? Or tweet or Facebook, or post a video on YouTube? Or Vine it!
After all, you're the media as well. Time to be distrusted.
Related stories on TakePart:
• Online Privacy: Spread Your Message, Not Your Private Life
• Challenge the Media’s Misrepresentation of Women
• Can Social Media Save the Arctic Ocean?
Original article from TakePart
