These days, people just take for granted their access to a range of opinions on all aspects of public affairs. Sometimes we avail ourselves of reporters about whom we’ve never heard before, in venues that are new. We find thinkers and reporters we like from all sorts of platforms. Maybe we follow someone for a while and then move on to others. Our feeds present us live shows from across the spectrum.
What I find most amazing in all this new media is the raw talent I’m seeing on display. Not always, of course, but it happens regularly enough that I’m enthralled with the erudition, knowledge, and passion of a person who is broadcasting using nothing more than a phone, maybe even just sitting in a car. This one person now has as much opportunity to influence the public mind as major broadcast networks in the past.
These alternative venues have come along at just the right time. Mainstream media was becoming monolithic and ever more dumbed down the way propaganda necessarily always is. The condescension dripped to an intolerable level even as the flashes of intelligence and insight were ever more rare. I’m not sure where we would be as a society without the alternatives that have rescued public life in so many ways.
When I was very young, we had exactly three channels on TV, plus boring PBS. We had radio. We had our local paper. And that was pretty much it. CNN came along later and that was a relief–at the time. In general, we had no idea what we were missing. As the networks expanded outwards, however, they surrendered hard-won credibility. This became very obvious only in the last 10 years, during which time the podcasting world was born and every person gained access to the airwaves due to the high bandwidth. Now our options are seemingly infinite as it should be in a media environment befitting a free people.
Do we appreciate the talent involved here? I hope so. Watching videos produced by this new generation makes it all seem rather easy. I assure you it is not. I’ve done videos for years now and still make remarkable mistakes. I’ll get a verbal tick going or overuse a word. I will tilt my head in distracting ways or scratch my ear in a manner that diverts attention from the message. I work to improve but fixing one error will introduce one or two more.
It’s just not easy. It takes bravery, time, scrupulous attention to detail, confidence, and genuine conviction born of knowledge, else it does not come across well. The creators of such media are profoundly aware of what works and what does not because they have full access to analytics, much more so than broadcasters in the old days had. They try and try again, risking their reputations on failure, get up, and try again.
It’s not so easy.
Years ago, I was with family and someone had a video camera and was going from person to person doing interviews. The camera came to me. I froze. I could barely speak. My jaw locked in place. I uttered some words but I had to speak through my teeth. Essentially I was terrified of the lens and the technology and the idea that whatever I did in that moment would be immortalized, seen by my great-grandchildren. I would not function and nearly fell apart.
I had no idea that I had a strange phobia about the video camera. I was fine in front of a normal camera. Something about video terrified me. Years went by and I avoided the situation. I never wanted to feel that inner sense of seizing up and looking ridiculous again. I was like the guy at the wedding who refuses to dance but everyone knows it’s because he cannot. That was me with video.
Finally I could not stand it and I contacted a local theater professional. I asked if he could somehow work with me to overcome my fears. He agreed.
The training began on a Saturday morning. He set up a video camera in front of us both and he proceeded to interview me on a topic of my choosing. I chose Victorian Gothic literature. I was at first mortified but relaxed as it went on. After 20 minutes he turned off the camera. He made me watch. I stumbled on my words. I was moving my hands in strange ways. I was squirming in my chair. I was overly hortatory.
Having seen that, we tried again. This time was vastly better. By the end of that 20 minutes I was at home. I was relaxed and laughing and owning the space. We watched again. I was actually pleased, though I noted a few things.
The third time, he put the camera right on me. He asked me to speak to the camera as a friend, a good friend, even an intimate one. I needed to personalize the black glass circle, treat it as someone I needed to impress. The first time was terrible. We did the playback routine again. I saw what I was doing wrong and we tried again. The second time was better.
The third time was a charm. I could see it right there on film. I was relaxed, speaking clearly, and being generally compelling. I was absolutely stunned. This training took probably four to five extremely painful hours but I came out on the other side of it, completely over my fears. Such a strange psychological journey for me, facing irrational fears and getting beyond them.
From then on, I never feared the camera again. To be sure, I’m nothing close to being like so many in new media who have mastered the space, making themselves look completely normal while speaking both to no one and everyone. I cannot do that yet in ways that compete with the best but I’m getting there. In any case, the days of terror are long over.
My point is simply that the technology and freedom to speak has elicited from within the social firmament some enormous talent from many different perspectives. It’s not just politics. It’s culture, how-to videos, sub-niches of religion and professional speciality, just about anything and everything you would ever want to know.
This is what the new media has given us, access to the vast wisdom that would otherwise be denied to us. I like to think that this is going to rescue us as a society during very troubling times. I don’t know that for sure but I’m thrilled we have it. I would never go back to those three channels much less the Fireside Chats of the 1930s. Sometimes it can be upsetting to have so much in the way of information. Sometimes the truth hurts.
Give thought and thanks for the enormous talent we have out there and for the ways in which our times have unleashed so much of it for the benefit of humanity.
