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The Media Poll 03
From xx609@prairienet.org Thu Jan 30 12:42:05 1997
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 11:34:09 -0600 (CST)
From: Media Poll <xx609@prairienet.org>
To: ftp@etext.org
Subject: The Media Poll - No. 3
_______________________________________________________
THE MEDIA POLL Number 3 January 30, 1997
_______________________________________________________
By John Marcus
Featuring:
-NET COVERAGE: THE UNHOLY TRYST OF CONVENIENCE
-THE MEDIA POLL 10: GENERIC CELEBRITIES
--------------------------------------------
[To receive The Media Poll by email, request a free subscription at
xx609@prairienet.org]
NET COVERAGE: THE UNHOLY TRYST
This week's "poll" was prompted by a reader who suggested we follow up on
her impression that an unusually high number of articles about the
Internet seem to focus on "certain negative, sensationalist topics" such
as "sex, pedophiles, terrorists, and censorship." The media, if this is
true, seems capable of only finding the bad stuff interesting, making the
Internet Story one where crime and/or prurience meet data communications
in the ultimate unholy tryst of convenience.
OF COURSE, THERE IS TRUTH in this Story. My entirely clinical research
for this column showed that porn is just around the corner anywhere you
go on the Net. I found that if you do a keyword search using a service
like InfoSeek for some kind of vaguely sex-related term, not only will
you get a ginormous amount of the filthiest hits you ever saw, you'll also
get instant ads popping up on the screen touting HARDCORE this and
UNCENSORED that. Seems logical now, but five years ago few Net gurus
would have forecast that cyberporn would become *the* killer Internet
application second only to e-mail. [Certainly it's one of the market
drivers behind the whole WebTV gamble.]
I'm sure our correspondent would admit that since certain old-fashioned
barriers to becoming a pornography consumer, such as having to be seen in
public requesting and paying for socially unacceptable magazines and
videos, do not exist on the Net and therefore have encouraged a prolific
new distribution channel for the industry. And wouldn't you agree that
so-called "chat rooms" and unmonitored bulletin boards make it easier for
child molesters and stalkers to at least initiate their sordid projects?
THE FLIP SIDE, of course, is that this is all "just around the corner" in
the real world as well, in more or less the same proportion, and that
talking up sleaze and negativity on the Net is just as
sensationalistically skewed as the damning of television for ruining
society or blaming Ice T for the poor relations between police and
inner-city youth. [I heard that "Cop Killer" is being banned again
somewhere, which will surely do nothing but keep it from being deleted
from the record company's back catalogue even longer.]
But is it true? Can our correspondent's "impression" be substantiated by
cold hard facts? Let us throw the switch on the Media Poll machine,
using the usual limitations (top 50 U.S. newspapers). . . .
The first column (after the year indicator) lists the number of articles
mentioning "Internet" or "World Wide Web". The next column lists the
number of articles mentioning one of those terms AND words such as sex,
pornography, censorship, terrorism, etc. The last column indicates the
percentage of such stories in relation to the total.
Internet Internet Sleaze
etc. + "negative" Quotient
term(s)
-----------------------------------------------
1993 1,527 199 13%
1994 10,111 1,061 10%
1995 36,826 4,461 12%
1996 71,942 7,206 10%
Do you find it at all troubling that one out of every ten articles that
mention the Internet in our largest circulating newspapers also mention
one of our designated "negative" terms? Does that mean only nine
concentrate on the "positive" - i.e., the revolutionary effect the Net
has had on science, education, libraries, news, mass communications, the
software and computer hardware industries, and personal communications?
Let's not get alarmed yet. Analyzing the data for trends, one is struck
by the rock solidity of the sleaze quotient. Even back in 1993 when the
porn-friendly Web was still under development, roughly the same
percentage of articles about the Net couldn't stay away from the more
difficult and seamy aspects of the medium as last year. It is certainly
significant that despite the wild growth in total coverage, this
sub-sector of media Net coverage held its ground. True, there were over
7,000 "negative" Internet stories last year compared to just 1,000 in
1994, and that may be what is creating the impression that they're out of
control, but the full context should be noted: at least the sleaze
quotient isn't growing, and 10% isn't that bad, is it?
BUT IS THIS SAMPLE realistic? Just how many of these "Internet" stories
are really about the Internet? A free-text search can't predict relevance
too well: half of these stories might have only barely mentioned the Net
in a throwaway reference. They could be about anything.
So let's look at our sample again and zero in on those articles where
"Internet" or "World Wide Web" are in the *headline* of the article--this
should limit the pool to stories actually focusing on the Net:
Internet Internet + Sleaze
etc. in "negative" Quotient
headline term(s)
-----------------------------------------------
1993 166 29 17%
1994 1,245 145 12%
1995 4,631 714 15%
1996 7,489 1,093 15%
With this better-focused sample we notice two things:
1) The Sleaze Quotient is just as steady as before
2) The Sleaze Quotient is even higher!
Things may not be getting worse every year, but 15% is enough to make you
think. Fifteen percent. What's that, one out of seven? Dear readers: I
leave further analysis up to you. Dear journalists: is that the best you
can do?
________________________________________________________
THE MEDIA POLL 10: GENERIC CELEBRITIES
I have a thing about "generic celebrities." Not much of a thing. It's
just that sometime during the 1980s I noticed there seemed to be a
generic celebrity of the year--or even month--usually the product of some
media-saturated scandal or other. And after the new celebrity's scandal
died down, he or she remained on the public stage for some time longer
due to his or her firm impression onto the soft clay that makes up the
collective American psyche: Donna Rice, Tammy Faye Bakker, Leona
Helmsley, Oliver North's secretary whose name I can't believe I've
forgotten*, Oliver North himself. Many of these personalities have
nearly faded away completely from the spotlight, but the 1990s have made
sure we're not in short supply, producing Tonya Harding, the Bobbits,
Gennifer Flowers, and Richard Jewel.
BUT LATELY my definition of the term has been changing as I recognize
another class of generic celebrity. These are the people whose celebrity
is so great (as in large, massive, *gros*) that it cannot be classified
in any one category of fame, such as politician, entertainer, athlete.
These people may have been actors or sportsmen at one time--and that is
how they developed their fame--but since then they have transcended their
original fields of endeavor and are now more famous simply for being
famous. They are distinguished from the people in the first paragraph by
the fact that they did at one time actually *do* something for which they
were *celebrated* (well, most of them did, anyway). But like the purely
sensationalist media personalities above, they are either on TV all the
time or they are *talked about* on TV all the time because they are
*beyond* TV. (Some are the punchlines of jokes every night on late night
TV.) Can O.J. be called just an ex-football player anymore? To call
Oprah Winfrey a talk show host is really far from accurate. And Martha
Stewart and Richard Simmons: just what the hell are their jobs, anyway?
Below, then, is my 1996 list of Top Generic Celebrities. Who would you
have put on the list?
1996 Top 10 Generic Celebrities
(by number of mentions in the top 50 U.S. newspapers)
--------------------------------
Ross Perot 15,637
O.J. Simpson 14,393
Dennis Rodman 12,799
Madonna 8,414
Michael Jackson 5,498
Jack Kevorkian 3,616
Larry King 3,319
Oprah Winfrey 3,271
Martha Stewart 2,679
Mother Teresa 2,647
Howard Stern 1,788
Sarah Ferguson 1,196
Richard Simmons 459
YES, I KNOW, there are 13 people in this "Top 10." This just goes to
show how potent are the appearances of people like Howard Stern (11) and
Richard Simmons (13): they just seem to be in your face all the time.
(On the other hand, maybe they are beasts of broadcasting whose print
exposure doesn't measure up.)
Surely the top 5 listed here are no surprise. Rodman (3) in particular
has extended his reach deeply into the realm of generic celebrityhood. A
couple years ago he was Top 50, I'd say, and now he's easily Top 3, getting
52% more coverage than his ex-girlfriend and headline default setting
Madonna (4). What's truly scary, though, are the Top 3's relation to the
total number of articles published *on anything* in 1996.
THERE WERE, according to my sources (the DataTimes news database
service), 2,784,239 articles published in the top 50 U.S. newspapers last
year. This means that Dennis Rodman actually appeared in 0.4597% of
*all* articles published in 1996. And that the Worm infests itself into
just about *one out of every 200 articles* published. Same thing for H.
Ross (1) and O.J. (2).
Meaning?
Richard Simmons' braying ubiquity may be limited to TV, but our 10's
dominance over the morning read is undeniable. Add up all the numbers
above and one of these people that are famous just for being famous is in
one out of every 40 news items. For every 40 headlines, for every 40
leads, soon to follow, inevitably, like The Partridge Family after The
Brady Bunch, will be Jack or Oprah or Larry or one of their MP10 kin,
there, and there, just because they're there. . .
[*I remembered: Fawn Hall]
NOTE TO READERS
The "You Heard it There First" and "Popular Arts in Review" features will
follow in future columns. If you hadn't yet noticed, my publishing
schedule is fluid, so ignoring arbitrary deadlines should result in
better and more frequent, if shorter and less diverse, columns.
-----------------------------------------------
INSPIRATIONAL LYRIC:
"My '98's booming with a trunk of funk/
And all the jealous punks can't stop the dunk"
-Chuck D, 1988 [Don't Believe the Hype]
-----------------------------------------------
Note to Bandwidth Police and Content Cops:
Very shortly I will stop posting the full text of The Media Poll on
(relevant) newsgroups and will provide just headlines and a pointer to a
soon-to-be-functioning web site. In the meantime, I trust this modest
and infrequent column hasn't overwhelmed anyone's resources (or patience).
For now, past issues of the Media Poll are available in The Etext
Archives, a two-gigabyte archive of Net-based e-zines. Point your
browser, as they used to say, to
http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/TheMediaPoll/ or you can retrieve them
via ftp at ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/TheMediaPoll
To subscribe to the email version, email xx609@prairienet.org
To complain, email xx609@prairienet.org
The Media Poll is Copyright 1997 by John Marcus
