Digital age ushers in previously diminished voices
Speaker emphasizes progress in global media
Sean McGahan
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A man who stands on one of the highest platforms of media said Tuesday he is encouraged by the progress of those with a digital camera and a keyboard.
Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for PBS's The NewsHour and former National Public Radio host, emphasized the ability of changing technology to open new doors throughout the world of global media.
"I think there is no more perilous, no more exciting and no more head-scratching time to be doing what we do now," Suarez said.
Suarez, 50, said he started his voyage in the field in a time when editors told him, "God only made three networks, and he's not making any more of them."
But since that time, advances in technology have allowed messages to be broadcast through an array of different avenues and from a variety of different perspectives.
These advances are positive overall, Suarez said, as they allow the stories of previously neglected communities and minorities of the world to be told, such as coverage of the war in Iraq.
Suarez, who spoke to hundreds in the Student Center Ballrooms Tuesday night primarily about the relationship between religion and politics, said earlier in the day that affordability and diminished size of cameras and satellites allow different messages to be sent throughout the world.
He emphasized the importance of the Internet to act as a vehicle to spread these messages. He said he is encouraged when his daughter shows him things she has found on the Web depicting the struggle of a man in a third-world country - a story that never would have been accessible before.
"New ways to get those stories told will evolve as people are just bursting against the constraints - a sort of bottleneck of all this stuff being produced, but just a tiny little channel for it to pass through," Suarez said. "The web is a fat pipe, and it ought to have a lot more stuff flowing through it."
Many at SIUC are busy dissecting the ways that these forms can reach people, said John Downing, founding director of the Global Media Research Center.
One such research fascination has been the growth of Nollywood, grassroots films out of Nigeria that have found a large market throughout Africa and the rest of the world.
The lowered cost of digital cameras and editing equipment have allowed these formerly ignored stories to be told and understood throughout the world, Downing said.
Researchers in the center have also studied the worldwide effects of blogging, a method that has become one of the most basic and accessible forms of shared media.
Downing said the growth in perspectives as a result of blogs has many predicting that it will completely transform the way media is consumed and may wipe out many of the traditional forms - a prediction he doesn't buy.
"I'm not so sweeping in my forecast of that, but it's definitely a major opportunity for people to get a voice who haven't had a voice before," Downing said. "It also recognizes that you don't have to have the voice in 10s and 20 millions to be heard."
The question then turns to how media consumers will choose what information to gather out of the infinite sources. Downing said many predict a situation similar to the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel where everyone is talking and no one is listening.
But that theory too, Downing said, may be extreme.
People will go to where they feel comfortable getting information, via sites they trust and value, Downing said. In time, this will become a habit just as reading a specific newspaper is habitual.
For this to occur, Suarez said, the younger generation promoting the messages must take hold and find a way to market them to the new audience. If they don't, the conglomerations will continue to run the way stories are told, he said.
"Your ability to feel what it is like in another person's shoes will be diminished by the fact that millionaire reporters are running around with all the best perches to stand on to tell the stories," Suarez said.
Many in the younger generation are already recognizing what new forms they trust and go to in order to gain a well-rounded perspective, said Malcolm Cotton, a junior from St. Louis studying radio-television.
Cotton, who attended Suarez' speech, said he visits a variety of sites to gather information, from the traditional FOX news sites to more unconventional blogs.
The shift to the Web carries both positive and negative aspects, Cotton said. It is positive because the lesser-told stories can reach more people, but the amount of misinformation it allows is an inherent evil of the system.
Cotton said it is up to the viewers to do their own research and decide what and who to trust.
"There's so many things going on in the Internet, so you can't really stop it. It's up to the viewer to take that information and digest it and basically get information from different sources," he said.
Sean McGahan can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 253 or mcgahan@siu.edu.
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