My advertising career has been marked by
clients spending big money in mass media toward getting favorable publicity
from the media and more often than not I have witnessed that such obligations
are intricate which are frequently compromised debating media’s journalism ethics.
The concept of media commercialization is not unambiguous. Journalistic
content has often been market-adjusted that is often trivialized, tabloidized
and sensationalized. Journalists have started becoming celebrities through
image creations and media companies are driven more by commercial interests
than journalistic ideals. Increasing competition toward gaining eyeballs has
diverted the editorial focus on the audience rather than the news.
The movie ‘Night Crawlers’ portrays such a
commercialization of American media. Director Dan Gilroy paints a gory, bloody
and a very graphic image of media sensationalism, giving a very real picture of media practices which often the general public is oblivious of. Unemployed and
desperate Jake Gyllenhal teams up with the blood-sport veteran, TV channel director
Rene Russo to not just cover the crime in the city but also generate situations
that can create the sensational crime news. In the breakneck, ceaseless search
for footage, they both flourish along with the TV Channel as police siren
equals a possible windfall and victims are converted into big bucks.
Once again I hint at the reality of
fiction, as on one hand the extreme portrayal of such sensationalism maybe
viewed as possible only in fiction and yet there is evidence that wars have
been waged over such yellow journalism. The changing media landscape of
digitized dialogue versus the old-fashioned mass media monologue has often been
celebrated and yet the power of mass media continues to hold us ransom to such
gory sport of blood. In my opinion, fictional tales such as ‘Night Crawlers’
warns us to be vary of our patterns of media consumption and perhaps hints us
to alter our habits of media use, pointing more toward pull rather than the
push structures.
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