Sometimes people speak of how alternative media such as blogs and less paper based news formats speak to the end of journalism and news media as we know it. Sometimes I wonder if the traditional media are doing it themselves.
As many of you might be aware, yesterday announced the passing of Venezuelan Leader Hugo Chavez. I found out mainly through Twitter. I was actually watching BBC news at the time, where the pressing stories in the first hour were the following stories which seem to be of public importance:
- Manchester United going out of the Champion’s league after defeat from Real Madrid and contestable referee decision (in fairness Britain is a country that celebrates football so sports news isn’t completely unmerited)
- Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, informally known in magazines as Wills and Kate, announce gender of their child – erm, so the BBC are quite big on deference, and its true that there is a lot of international public interest (for whatever reason) on this subject – but I would quite prefer this kind of news to be on E!
- Justin Bieber causes outrage by being 2 hours late to performance – parents demand apology – erm – this was seriously considered headline news for television.
It is for this reason that I normally think about looking at other news networks. Al Jazeera for instance, or RT. I’m a little bit tired, annoyed even, at the level of irrelevance at news stories sometimes. I grant that there are lots of things of public importance that are pretty depressing, like the economy, and all the issues that are related to the economy. However those are of great importance to an informed democracy.
Also a good news agenda should introduce stories that we don’t normally think about. With that in mind I have lately been admiring Vice magazine and their website. In a sense I am desperately shocked that I would ever have to admit this, but I find that the reportage and breadth of topics addressed by Vice magazine to be very enlightening – Vice magazine are often known for a degree of cynicism, having very unusual and sometimes just gross stories, however they then come up with things like ‘calling out the Thigh Gap phenomenon‘ (warning – contains objectification) or their story on the invisible minority of gay Palestinians. I’m currently part of a blog where one of my jobs is to monitor news stories and report on interesting things, I always am in favour of linking to Vice stories, but the very informal writing style, and gratuitous use of words like ‘fuck’ make me think twice about the audience I want to link this to.
I have to face it. Vice Magazine are doing a great job, I consider them a good news source in a world where the Guardian puts forward transphobic articles and ignorant commentary from people who basically say ‘I told you so!!1′ about the 2008 GFC without too much awareness of that old thing called ‘post hoc ergo procter hoc’, or when the BBC think news about Justin Bieber and a guy who dresses like Batman is proportionally important. Many Vice reports are outright crass and in fairness the publication doesn’t make a reputation for being too serious. However it says a lot when something like Vice can be cutting edge when it comes to having their ears to the ground on social trends.
Sinistre
Noumenal Realm 