Content material, as media gurus preserve preaching, is king. However such PowerPoint pep speak is shallow: “Content material” — an more and more bastardised time period that has come to indicate TV newscasts, podcasts, motion pictures, viral movies, Netflix collection, memes, information articles, editorial options, actual promoting, covert promoting, tweets and Fb posts, natural or boosted — can also be an anaesthetic. It dulls the senses and kills that means, then proceeds to belittle essence, promote shallowness and ultimately undermine the follow of journalism.
By no means earlier than within the historical past of mankind has the consumption of “content material” been potential throughout each minute of our waking hours. It is a 21st-century human situation, a blessing and a curse. Whereas that proliferation has contributed considerably to free speech and democratic beliefs, the overabundance of produced content material and the velocity with which one piece of “content material” is outmoded by one other in an limitless cycle has additionally desensitised our perspicacity and threatened to sideline the intense work of actual journalists — irrespective of what number of of that dying breed are nonetheless left.
This phenomenon could also be common, however in Thailand it is significantly alarming given our poor customary of journalism within the first place.
Take the day by day “drama” that feeds into the content material meat-grinder. That time period, “drama”, used to imply one thing within the vein of Sophocles or not less than (let’s not set our hopes too excessive) our prime-time slap fests that includes perfectly-coiffed main {couples}. However what has occurred is that, on tv, Thai information exhibits have usurped the position of drama-peddlers, whereas the web information cycle, with its sinister, radioactive high quality that spreads and multiplies poisonous matter, has develop into a theatre of click-baiting absurdity and lurid sensationalism. Daily these “content material makers” wait to pounce and slap the “drama” sticker on something they will, then spin a minimal angle right into a Mahabharata-style epic.
Superstar news-mongers seize upon any petty Fb submit, Twitter hashtag or clip of cellular phone footage to make non-stories into information drama to fill their ample slots by blowing all the pieces out of proportion — a automotive accident, a lotto feud, a home spat, a mugging, you title it. On a extra disturbing scale, the current case of the Lop Buri gold-shop robber/killer is a first-rate instance of an actual crime being ruthlessly exploited as drama.
A homicidal theft is worthy of being reported, I believe. However the large quantity of air time and sources spent on the story by huge and small information retailers alike was verging on ridiculous. Determined, sloppy and even unethical, reporters resorted to interviewing clueless onlookers, consulting feng shui masters and, in a single case, harassing the victims’ kin. Information hosts aired every bit of gossip and conspiracy idea whereas rationalising that they needed to honour “all sides of the story”. And certain sufficient, earlier than this story is even lifeless they’ll discover one other one to feed into the manufacturing line.
The disruption of old-school media has introduced many constructive adjustments, that is indeniable. The taking part in subject has been levelled, the voices diversified. State management is more durable (not that they’ve stopped making an attempt) and narratives are democratised. However we now have but to search out the best steadiness as time-tested journalistic ideas are exploited or flatly abused. Some journalists brazenly flaunt propaganda (virtually with pleasure). Some reporters double as company PR. Most “content material creators” really do the job of copywriters for merchandise. And there are these newscasters who drone on about probably the most ineffective incident for 20 minutes with out contributing something to the general public curiosity.
I’ve no intention of declaring struggle on content material. I simply imagine that we want much less “content material” and extra journalism. Extra contemplation and fewer scrollable information. Extra that means and fewer headlines. Powerful name, sure, in an age when the blanket time period “content material” opens up extra monetary prospects. Salespeople do not even promote “adverts” any extra, they promote “content material”. Powerful name, when expertise delivers quick, low-cost and disposable content material to your private display. Powerful name, when even journalism professors battle to clarify an enormous, shape-shifting fashionable data matrix crisscrossed by fact, post-truth, criticism, propaganda, affect, objectivity, PR push, Breitbart and CNN, The Mettad and The Momentum. Pantip and Thai Rath, actual faux information and faux faux information, on and on.
Powerful, however essential as a result of in any other case the social service carried out by journalists will probably be outsmarted by political spin docs and company vultures. A giant chunk of the burden lies with the viewers, too. It is laborious to cease thumb-scrolling, to decelerate the consumption of textual content and pictures, to withstand forwarding one more ineffective clip, to cease passing fast judgment, to actually look and skim as an alternative of simply looking. To deactivate. If that is not potential, then we should study to higher distinguish between “content material” and content material.
Maybe it is time to put that course at school.
Kong Rithdee
Former Life Editor
Kong has written about movies for 18 years with the Bangkok Submit and different publications, and is among the most outstanding writers on cinema within the area.
The post We need less ‘content’ and more journalism appeared first on Down The Middle News.
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