SERVING Yourself - How to Consume Media

One warm afternoon in my younger days, I was returning home from an errand, through my usual shortcut (a neighbour's compound), and I met her preparing lunch (or maybe it was an early dinner?). I greeted her, noting the 'bankye' boiling on the pot, and she replied. Then she asked, "...do you know how to eat fufu?"

*I thought to myself. Don't you just pop it in your mouth with a bit of soup and swallow? - But I figured she was wondering if I was familiar with the skill of 'cutting' the ball of fufu with the ends of your fingers, and scooping it with a bit of soup, without spilling it all over your hands, shirt or the table. I told her "yes - I know how." 

It wasn't until someone else asked me a similar question that I realised this was more of a literal translation of a question which  means something close to, "have you eaten this before"  or "do you eat this?" I am not sure why the question is phrased as such, but it recently made me wonder about the local media and their SERVICE. I wondered, do you, dear reader, know how to 'eat' media? 

We are referred to as 'consumers'  because, depending on the media type, we will either read, listen, view, watch, or some other thing; so consumption seems to be all-encompassing. Another good word for us is the audience, but as you can see, it has some limitations. We have been consuming media in various forms for centuries - but since higher technology came into our lives, some of the advancements are only decades old. The biggest concern for us doing the consuming is considering who is offering us the goodies for consumption (I'm refraining from saying who is serving us because it may be misunderstood as SERVING, and we're not yet at that point of the article).

So let's work with a loose timeline of the media as we know it. Centuries ago, the Authority (Kings, Queens, Chiefs, etc) used their town criers/akyeame/linguists/viziers etc to send out information. Understandably, these were announcements of things that are important for us or things they want us to know about. Somewhere along the way, it became more convenient to write out the message of the notice/announcement and place it at a central location that most of the subjects converged at or went past - often a market. This way, most of us will read the message and pass it on. 

The printing press was invented in the 15th Century, which meant we could produce multiple copies of printed text to sell / hand out to people, and the newspaper was born. This introduced a different dimension for consumption, because whatever was on the menu was not coming from the Authority, but rather those who controlled the newspaper. They selected the latest information which they believed was of interest to most of us and put it in there, ostensibly to inform, educate and entertain us. Even at this stage, they knew there were limitations on this role. Not everyone can read, or afford to pay for a newspaper (if it was for sale), and not everyone expected that they were actually going to be informed, educated or entertained by the media. Let's hold this thought and fastforward to almost 500 years later.

In the 1920s, some smart people expanded on the idea of transmitting sound over radio waves - they were able to transmit sound from one transmitter to several receivers on the same frequency. One of these smart people, being the son of a farmer, described this as "broadcasting" (which is essentially spreading several seeds over an area, expecting some of them to take hold and grow crops) and good old Radio Broadcasting was born. Within a decade, some even smarter people improved upon this idea to be able to transmit both sound and images over the same radio frequencies, and Television Broadcasting was also born. The rest is history - really. 

The fantastic thing about broadcasting is that, you get informed and educated instantly, and usually at any time of day - unlike with newspapers, which usually come out at a point in the day (often morning), and after a few minutes, their news is really not new anymore. In fact, news in a newspaper is not really 'new' at all, simply because the stories are basically all the things that happened yesterday, just before you went to bed; and the actual production and printing takes place while you were asleep, just so you can get informed and educated when you wake up. Entertainment is subjective and not as important on a mass level to continue writing about it here, so from this point, we will cease to discuss it.  For the masses, however, there are things we all NEED to know, and there are things that are useful for ALL of us to know.

So whoever is controlling the media has to consider what things you really NEED to know, or will be USEFUL for you to know - in other words; what is 'newsworthy.' There's the tricky part. Someone you probably don't even know, has decided that these are things you need to know and they go out to get this information and give it to you. You also 'consume' it, taking for granted that even if there were other things going on, they were not as important or interesting as what you have just consumed, which is why they've been left out of the package you're receiving. And in all this, you haven't even requested for them to "inform and educate" you. In fact, throughout this timeline, and despite the obvious interests and expectations of their owners, the media have claimed that it is necessary for them to remain independent and above influence. This has always been something of a paradox. How does someone you cannot control, influence, teach or even criticise serve your interest. In fact, how do they even know what your interest is? They don't. The have basic criteria to determine what is generally interesting/important to the greater number of people, and that is what they work with. But there has to be a certain professionalism and objectivity to their delivery. Otherwise, they're just like politicians - claiming to serve many, and yet really working for just a few. The worst part is the their rush to be the first to tell the story. Unfortunately, with technological advances, we are able to follow up multiple information sources, which means that the speed with which you give us news is no longer a strong enough factor to make us always stick to your paper or station. This means that the old crazes (such as breaking a story first or sensational headlines) are not really as valid as they used to be.

The news - information that informs or educates us - has to be unbiased and filled with facts, that enable us to make decisions and judgments where necessary. In the case of newspapers, these facts and so many other details can fill up as many pages as the information will go on. But in the case of broadcast media (radio and TV), the news is so fleeting, and there are some limitations to how long they can talk, that we have to consider how to sum up the story such that we are still informed and educated, and yet it doesn't take forever to find it out. That, of course, doesn't mean we're supposed to leave out any important facts. It just means that the delivery should be different.

You'll find the following versions of a news story in broadcast news:

• Breaking Story/News - A story based on an incident or issue that took place within the past few seconds or minutes. It is so fresh that all the details may not be available, but the general gist is available. They may interrupt something that is already scheduled just to be able to deliver this information.
• Developing Story/News - A story based on an incident that happened a few minutes ago, but is already a bit too old to call "breaking." Since the story is so fresh, however, the details are coming in slowly, and the media house is releasing them as they come in.
• Top Story - This has broken within the past half-hour or so, and is such a big issue that the media house needs to continue building up on it.
• Feature - This story is like a short documentary, which focuses on something of interest, which may not necessarily be new.

The big, international media operations like CNN, BBC, etc do these constantly, consistently and professionally. In fact, within an hour, you will know all the most important and interesting things going on around the world at the moment. You'll probably find that there is a lot of repetition involved, but at each point, some extra information is likely to have been added to the story. Repetition is important for the simple reason that we are likely to forget what we have just heard, so when the news is being presented, it is likely to be presented in a manner such as, "I have something important to tell you -> I am telling you the important thing -> This is the important thing I have just told you."

More importantly, the facts always address a number of important questions - some of these vary, depending on the kind of story, but they're famously called the 5 W's and H - Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. For example; who was involved, what happened to him/her, where it happened, what time it did, and how it happened. Essentially, the kind of questions you will ask when you hear something directly from another person. Since you weren't on the scene, and probably didn't even know something was happening until you 'consumed' it on the news, this is the role of the journalist - to ask. and more importantly, ANSWER those questions that you want to. Anything short of that is really not in your interest.

So... Now that, hopefully, you know how to consume the media - particularly the news media. Here's a question for you, and however you answer should probably inform what you decide you will like to consume. Are the media you consume DELIVERING proper, factual information that is important, interesting and useful to you, or are you just being SERVED?