Chris Hardie » cnn

Mainstream media adopts the dehumanizing 'illegals' label

Chris — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:52:08 +0000

It was frustrating but not surprising to see today that CNN has joined the list of mainstream media outlets who have adopted the harmful framing offered up in the debate about the U.S. borders, by beginning to use the label of “illegals” in their reporting. It may seem like a relatively small difference between that and other commonly used terms, but I find it to be a particularly dehumanizing one.

When we group a whole bunch of people together into a single ambiguously defined but broadly used label, we make it much easier to separate ourselves and our sense of humanity from the individuals who make up that group, and their humanity. When we use “the illegals” or “the foreigners” or “the gays” or “the blacks” or “the liberals” or “the homeless” in a discussion about the standards or rules or expectations to apply to that group, the abstraction allows us to consider policy without really considering practice and consequences. The way we would act with someone standing in front of us can be disregarded altogether, and the way we think we should act according to experts and politicians and those with the loudest voices begins to take its place.

This is made even worse when stereotypes are perpetuated about the group, and negative but finely detailed false images of them are painted by those who would pursue particularly harmful or discriminatory practices against the group. Come on, you’ve heard them: “all illegals are…” and “the gays just want to…” and “the homeless won’t even…” and “liberals don’t know how to…”, repeated over and over again. This is how we learn to disrespect entire populations, ethnicities, and world-views without really knowing anything about them. This is how we learn to hate.

How does it change the conversation, then, when we say “illegal immigrants”?

Or when we say “people who are immigrating illegally”?

Or “men and women and children who are crossing the U.S. border illegally”?

Or “men and women and children who are crossing the U.S. border in hopes of finding something better for themselves and their families, in spite of attempts by others to keep them out”?

The more clear we are about the real human beings we’re discussing, and the motivations involved in their actions, the better discussion we can have about the issues at hand. And difficult though it may be, the more likely we are to be affected by the real people involved, instead of distanced from them through the use of an all-encompassing label. Yes, it’s harder and takes more thought and doesn’t sound as snappy in an article, but words matter, and I think we owe it to our fellow humans to be more precise.

I also think it’s a basic responsibility of the men and women who create the news media we consume to expose this disingenuous and harmful use of language; they certainly shouldn’t be perpetuating it themselves.

Right now I'm blogging about Twitter

Chris — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:48:17 +0000

At the office today, a few of us were discussing Twitter, the website that lets people broadcast mini-updates about their life, thoughts, whereabouts and other news in chunks of 140 characters or less, all the time. People do it through their cell phones and desktop computers, and they do it from home, the car, the airplane, the airplane skyway, the airport lobby, the baggage claim, press conferences, government meetings, trade shows, beaches, you name it. Barack Obama uses Twitter. So does CNN, so does Wil Wheaton. There are YouTube videos explaining how Twitter works. There are how-to articles on how to get more people watching your Twitter updates.

The one question I have is…

WHY? Why do people feel the need to take it that far? Why do we want to be so immediately connected to each other that when our friends and colleagues decide to make themselves a sandwich or blow their nose, we want to know about it?

And I ask that question not entirely out of judgment or disdain. I’m truly curious about this phenomenon, and yes, there’s that part of me that wonders if I’m just a moron (or worse in my line of work, “Web 2.0 Stupid”) because I can’t understand the motivation to spend that much time sharing so little useful information. There’s some urge to try it out to see if I feel any different, like maybe there’s a secret chemical that’s released into your brain when you tell the Internets about crossing the street or visiting the bathroom. But I can’t imagine that it does anything other than to further isolate people from meaningful face-to-face interactions, or to further destroy the collective attention span of humanity. As one person said today in our office conversation, “Twitter is like blogging for people who can’t concentrate long enough to complete a three paragraph blog post without getting distracted.”

Three paragraphs! Three paragraphs is a tome compared to 140 characters. Has it gotten that bad? Why, when I was blogging back in the day –

Wait, what was I typing about?

Oh yeah.

So, I’m thoroughly perplexed, and I don’t like being thoroughly perplexed about things that lots of people are doing. It’s scary, scary like realizing that everyone around you just became a flesh eating zombie and that they might be looking for food soon. I understand why people smoke, watch the Super Bowl, and pick their scabs, but I don’t get this. Maybe I just need to try it out.

If any zomb–er, Twitter users out there want to try to justify this insanity to me, please do so below…I expect more than 140 characters.

Richmondite notes digerati exclusivity in CNN/YouTube debate

Chris — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:06:59 +0000

The CNN Political Ticker has published a comment by Nancy Kolger of Richmond, Indiana, in response to last night’s CNN/YouTube Republican Political Debate:

As a Senior Citizen I am really disappointed that not one question was asked about Health Care and rising Drug Costs for all the people. I can send you an email response and/or question but I do not know how to take or send a video or download and all that other stuff that younger people do. So therefore I was not given the chance to ask a question and I feel this is a form of discrimination…

Kolger goes on to suggest some topics that she would have wanted to cover had she been able to submit a question. The responses in the comments range from agreement to disagreement to outright insult. Of course this is all happening on the highly interactive website of the news organization that pioneered the fast-paced media product directed at short attention spans. I suspect there are some “senior citizens” out there who wouldn’t know how to point a mouse at cnn.com, and some who are preparing their YouTube video responses complete with CGI effects right now. Good for Nancy for getting this far.