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Monday, September 24, 2007

Media Face Off: OJ Takes on the Jena Six

I watched television news this weekend. Typically I get my news online, or from a newspaper, but rarely from television. I think I forgot how limited and misleading TV news tends to be. I'm sure some experts have theories about why this is, but all I know is it is worse than print media.

I was shocked to see no coverage at all of the Jena 6.

So I thought I'd do a little experiment, to see whether the newsies think people are more interested in OJ Simpson, or in a new chapter in the ongoing struggle for African American civil rights.

Google News (which is a highly balanced aggregator of diverse sources), offers me 15,599 results for OJ Simpson.


How did the Jena 6 fare? Well, Google informs me there are 3,465 pieces. Apparently OJ's antics are just that much more interesting.


This of course should lead any thinking person to question why one is considered newsworthy and the other is not.


See my first Media Face Off: China's Stock Market vs. Migrant Workers.

1 comment:

princesspatrice said...

I'm actually enrolled in a culture diversity course this semester and we talked about this subject a few days ago. I think it's ridiculous that the media and sources of news haven't been talking about Jena 6. Society today is more concerned about Vanessa Hudgens' naked pictures or OJ Simpson robbing someone than they are about the Jena 6 incident or the war in Iraq. I don't think the media always gives the right stories the right amount of coverage and the Jena 6 incident is a perfect example. Not many people in class knew what had happened and everyone just seemed to kind of avoid it. Hopefully the phase of being so caught up and awe-struck by celebrities will eventually die down and real matters will get more attention and support.