Pack behavior

No stupid idea who starts it and why the rest stupidly follow, but sometimes it’s simply pathetic (so is the blatant photoshopping).

Pack media behavior is inevitable. Drop a few thousand journalists into a city where the air is foul and the Web is policed so they can’t get to some Web site they want to reach, and they will report on it. Being there somehow gives everything a higher editorial priority.

But once something is reported, it is no longer the news priority unless there is some dramatic change. Has the pollution in Beijing really decreased enough to make that a new news story? I don’t think what is being reported is guided by anything other than the access that media has or does not have in Beijing (which BTW is also closely controlled by the IOC, from which the PRC’s State Committee on Information could probably learn a thing or two!). I’ve been involved in the news biz to long to accept any notions of a vast, conscious news coverage conspiracy.

maybe it has something to with a certain few media conglomerates owning huge swathes of the press,and t.v.,and magazines?

Its an olympics, and the games have turned into a commercial circus…..there is nothing more uninteresting than hundreds of self-important people running around trying to get a “story” out of nothing. Something like the political conventions are these day….then the media reports on itself, and there are the inevitable photo essays by famous writers who try to inject some sort of uplifting theme to all of this, or that string of arty silouettes , good god, I know its a job but what is that? I guess Martin Parr is right, we have to meet the audience half way…..or not at all.

No stupid doubt about it.

http://stupidphotographer.blogspot.com/2008/08/i.html

Yes, Parr could have fooled me. I thought the idea was to shoot really boring subject matter and disguise it as “art.” OK, so now we photograph car shows as social protest, to run next to the Lexus ads in the magazines. I am so glad to hear that magazine photography, is alive and well. Long live PDN. Can’t wait till the next New York Photo Festival, too.

WE? No. He. You figure out your own venue that gets you to lead the pack. HE has his own, rightfully all to himself, like all the classics that came before him. My stupid fingers are crossed for you, as well as everyone else-including myself-striving to get to that level!

Yes, I meant Martin. He has that all to himself.

Thing is, what he’s saying is, it’s not all his and to himself. Quite the contrary. His entire archive speaks to all of us simply being there, just noticing, truly. No games, no intrusion (except his stupid flash, avoidable with the latest D3 ISO).

Call me stupid, you lost me there…..but thanks anyway.

Neal, I would think some would report on web issues and some on the air; but its all air one day and all on the web the next. How is it so coordinated?

Mind reading?

Sometimes it’s no more complicated than this…the press guys arrive in the hotels and the near uniform first impression is…holy shit, it IS really polluted here. I’d better call my editor and peg that as my story for the first deadline.

Then as soon as the reporter pounds that one out, she runs into some other reporter who asks “have you tried to get the BBC online? I can’t get it. Wonder if the government is blocking that?” The word spreads like wildfire, and the next thing you know reporters are checking all the even mildly agressive Web sites and finding many of them blocked. So the story for second deadline becomes obvious, editors are called to confirm, the story lines approved and the reporting begins again.

All this is triggered by a shared information base combined with parallel conduct…a common small group behavior phenomenon that sociologists recognize widely. In short, it’s just the way things often work in groups, and is not a vast left/right (take your pick) wing news conspiracy.

Turn your back on the pack.
Consensus is suspicious…

Neal’s assessment is spot on. Once the “air clears” its no longer a story and on to the next most obvious sory, in this case censorship.