Sanders message, Journalism failure and the crisis with Tech companies
In a span of one hour I happen to make myself witness an incident (this is how I try to live by each day in my own way :) ).
Micro-incident 1: I come across this article, where Katie Couric, the journalist who had been a television host at all 3 big three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and was recently the Global News Anchor at Yahoo had shared some of her experience at a tech giant.
Micro-incident 2: One of my close friends shares this video on his Facebook wall.
Please watch that video since the rest of my article centers around it. And then you may agree or disagree with my summarization here:
It is about Bernie Sanders talking about the flaw in the principle which gives US President the supreme command over the military forces, which he proposes to be in hands of Congress. At the beginning he cites the examples of Yemen war crisis and then at the end emphasizes on the triviality of this particular case, and its the principle on which US goes to international war which concerns him.
Micro-incident 3: He adds his own interpretation:
Micro-incident 4: My chain of thoughts:
Thought 1: My friend, who I consider a talent*, almost gave an impression that Bernie may have a little act of activism pulled up there, focusing on a particular theme. But Sanders' message and intent was much larger. His primary focus was, as he stressed many times towards the end of the video, the "principle". Yemen crisis was just a case study for him.
Thought 2: This incident may not represent that big a difference, but there is a difference nonetheless. Now what if instead of a talent we have a stupid** in journalism who have been entitled to cover something critical or important to report (may not be this theme).
Thought 3: Worse part will be that, the deviation in the messages will not be backed by any deliberate plan or passion elements. Why do I think a deliberate malign of a message is less powerful than an unintended one? Well, then it will be chaos and can bring unexpected uncertain ripple consequences.
Thought 4: But then the common woman is beyond the capability to appreciate "principles" and wants stupid stories to be told to her always. Corporates call this as marketing and government call it demand generation). Then perhaps to preserve the intent of the message, the message may be needed to be processed as a hyperbole. Then an equally capable talent can only tell the story which is more relevant, right and not a skewed untruth.
Thought 5: And then we had technology, the power of voice was distributed which lead to dilution. This may not be necessarily a bad thing but then, as Katie Couric said after leaving Yahoo (why she didn't voice it before is another branch of discussion altogether): the tech companies didn't focus on story-content-connection they had the best minds working on widgets and delivery system only.
Thought 6: Exactly what Jeff Hammerbacher, presently CEO of Cloudera, said about product and engineering talents being employed in masses by companies such as Google and Facebook to work on advertising-related algorithms.
Thought 7: Why I blew this up? Well, see how relevant Sanders messages are and how powerful they should have been. Yet they couldn't get their right place in our civic spaces. Welcome to hyper postmodern societies.
talent*: Someone who has an ability to creatively and critically learn a skill either with one's self interest or under motivation of adequate incentives. More on this in this article.
stupid**: Someone who lacks ability to creatively learn a particular skill. Here it may refer to someone who was given responsibilities exceeding one's educational qualification.
Micro-incident 1: I come across this article, where Katie Couric, the journalist who had been a television host at all 3 big three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and was recently the Global News Anchor at Yahoo had shared some of her experience at a tech giant.
Micro-incident 2: One of my close friends shares this video on his Facebook wall.
Please watch that video since the rest of my article centers around it. And then you may agree or disagree with my summarization here:
It is about Bernie Sanders talking about the flaw in the principle which gives US President the supreme command over the military forces, which he proposes to be in hands of Congress. At the beginning he cites the examples of Yemen war crisis and then at the end emphasizes on the triviality of this particular case, and its the principle on which US goes to international war which concerns him.
Micro-incident 3: He adds his own interpretation:
Finally! Bernie is speaking out for the Yemeni people, mentions the death and famine of the Yemenis, and calls for the withdrawal of US military support to the conflict!
Micro-incident 4: My chain of thoughts:
Thought 1: My friend, who I consider a talent*, almost gave an impression that Bernie may have a little act of activism pulled up there, focusing on a particular theme. But Sanders' message and intent was much larger. His primary focus was, as he stressed many times towards the end of the video, the "principle". Yemen crisis was just a case study for him.
Thought 2: This incident may not represent that big a difference, but there is a difference nonetheless. Now what if instead of a talent we have a stupid** in journalism who have been entitled to cover something critical or important to report (may not be this theme).
Thought 3: Worse part will be that, the deviation in the messages will not be backed by any deliberate plan or passion elements. Why do I think a deliberate malign of a message is less powerful than an unintended one? Well, then it will be chaos and can bring unexpected uncertain ripple consequences.
Thought 4: But then the common woman is beyond the capability to appreciate "principles" and wants stupid stories to be told to her always. Corporates call this as marketing and government call it demand generation). Then perhaps to preserve the intent of the message, the message may be needed to be processed as a hyperbole. Then an equally capable talent can only tell the story which is more relevant, right and not a skewed untruth.
Thought 5: And then we had technology, the power of voice was distributed which lead to dilution. This may not be necessarily a bad thing but then, as Katie Couric said after leaving Yahoo (why she didn't voice it before is another branch of discussion altogether): the tech companies didn't focus on story-content-connection they had the best minds working on widgets and delivery system only.
Thought 6: Exactly what Jeff Hammerbacher, presently CEO of Cloudera, said about product and engineering talents being employed in masses by companies such as Google and Facebook to work on advertising-related algorithms.
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.
Thought 7: Why I blew this up? Well, see how relevant Sanders messages are and how powerful they should have been. Yet they couldn't get their right place in our civic spaces. Welcome to hyper postmodern societies.
talent*: Someone who has an ability to creatively and critically learn a skill either with one's self interest or under motivation of adequate incentives. More on this in this article.
stupid**: Someone who lacks ability to creatively learn a particular skill. Here it may refer to someone who was given responsibilities exceeding one's educational qualification.
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