To celebrate “National News Engagement Day”, I donated to what has steadily become my favorite news source in the past six months: the national and independent daily news program Democracy Now!. After hearing about DN! from a friend, I quickly fell in love with Amy Goodman’s raspy voiced reporting and the generous coverage given to topics I had never seen addressed in the mainstream media.
I began to really get into DN! after they devoted an entire broadcast to an interview with George Takei. Soon I wasn’t just watching the hour-long segment. I even went so far as to pick up books mentioned in my favorite interviews, or research topics that interested me within DN!’s online archives. I felt empowered and informed. There was only one problem. I liked DN! so much, I didn’t watch anything else.
As Shoemaker and Reese point out, the cultural value of individualism in our country has a pervasive effect on not only how we consume media, but also how we perceive the effects of such media on society, as well as the resulting study of those effects.
How then has the value of individualism translated into the consumption of news? If I self-select DN! and patronize only that program, is that the result of larger cultural norms favoring independent thought? And if so, how can we, as a culture, reconcile our need to be independent from the likely negative consequences of a “mirror-me” news consumption habit like my own?
Strategically Communicating 
I am an occasional viewer/listener of Democracy Now!, and consider it one of many vegetables that compose my media salad. Of course, we select the voices we find credible and compelling, and often those will be voices whose views correspond with our own. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it is important to temper the sources that confirm our beliefs with those that challenge them, if only to further fix our belief that what we feel is “right” really is.
By: bburk2014 on October 9, 2014
at 9:19 pm
I think the way we consume news very much reflects our value of individualism. It translates into what we choose to watch based upon what we value as individuals. Left or right, we as a society can commonly appreciate those who have taken the time to educate themselves about either side. There is something human about choosing our own political prepositions, and standpoints in general. I agree with bburk2014 in that it is important to balance what we are consuming, and challenge ourselves with new perspectives.
By: stephanieessin on October 10, 2014
at 1:00 am