Media & the Pictures in My Head

I’m not exactly sure how to answer this week’s blog question, but I’m going to just take a stab at it.

I think everyone’s reality is limited because even if we do a lot of traveling and learning about other people, we can really only understand so much. For me at the moment, my reality consists of college life and home life. I can explore other realities, though, via the internet, movies, and TV. But most of the things I see through the media will never really be my reality.

People are always complaining about media gatekeepers, that our news and information is too filtered by a minority. I agree that this is a problem, but is there a solution? Without gatekeepers, we would be absolutely inundated with information. How could we possibly make sense of it all?

My solution is pretty simple: Be aware of the fact that there are gatekeepers, there are people filtering our information through their own points of view, there is information that we might not get because someone doesn’t want it getting out. If you’re aware that all this is happening, you can take everything at face value for what it is—just part of the story. It’s really each individual’s responsibility to use a variety of media outlets for their information and to never assume that one message is the be-all-end-all, final say on the topic. (All of that can correspond to stereotypes as well. If you use stereotypes knowing that they’re not perfect judgments that describe every person or thing within the group, then you’ll be open to the possibility that it is really just a generalization).