Miscommunication

I am excited to say that Bravery has been mentioned in a press release for the first time. Joyce White, whom I wrote about in a previous post, had mentioned that she is participating in Bravery and it got printed in the press release. You can read about it here, but keep in mind that it isn't quite accurate. The writer mentions that Bravery assists organizations with beds and other resources, when actually Bravery will help raise money for organizations so they can obtain beds and necessary resources. When working with the media, I've found that you have to be really clear on what is said or the outcome may not be what you expect.

Here is a funny example:
When studying art anatomy at Mesa Community College (you learn every muscle, bone, kinetic movement in the body and apply it to life drawing), our class attended the BodyWorlds exhibit at the Arizona Science Center. This happened to be my second time around because it was so cool. A news team was interviewing visitors and they pulled me aside. I gave them my name and even spelled it for them. I told them I was an art student here with my class, etc. The next week, fellow students were excited to say they saw me on TV being interviewed. Later I even went out to a restaurant and a father with his kids pointed me out and smiled. What a boost to my ego...I was a celebrity!! Since I missed the airing, I went to the website and discovered that I was a nursing student named Vickie Flomshom or something. Great. ***For those of you who don't know about Body Worlds, it's an exhibit of real human bodies that are preserved through a process called plastination, and then displayed in artistic positions.

That miscommunication was small and relatively harmless, but as intelligent beings, we have to be careful about the conclusions we come to about media stories. On a more serious note, my husband went to an academic conference in New Orleans and I later joined him over the weekend for my birthday. It was our first time visiting and I was eager to know how the city was recovering after such devastation and human craziness. To our surprise we learned, from a writer who lives there, that the media misreported the disaster aftermath to the rest of us. Misreported means leaving out important information in addition to exaggerating certain aspects, and then there were flat out rumors which were never investigated. For example, the evacuation of 1.5 million New Orleans residents as the number one largest and successful operation in US history was not mentioned. While driving past the Superdome, I had this eerie feeling of all those displaced and desperate people living in cramped quarters. Violence, rape, hunger, failed plumbing were reported in the newspapers. Come to find out, the plumbing issue was true, but there were no stabbings, shootings, or rape that occurred in the Superdome. What is most disturbing to me is the media, along with a couple of prominent people, turned the whole thing into a race issue against African Americans. How can we, as a community, ever get past race and gender stereotypes if we are constantly fed biased information just to create stress and anxiety to sell news. It's the same thing with domestic violence.

When incidences of domestic violence are reported in the newspaper, there is usually a "love triangle" reported to make it more exciting. It turns the violence and murder into a crime of passion that makes the abuser, who is "such a nice guy" on the surface, snap with pain and fury and beat or kill his girlfriend because he loved her so much. Although it may happen, it's usually simply not true. Domestic violence is not full of love passion or even thrills. The realities are ugly and unsensational.

So you as the reader must use your wonderfully intelligent mind to take what you read with a grain of salt. Journalism is wonderful and extremely necessary. In fact, it an change the world, but the best way to really know about something is to visit the location or talk to someone who has lived through an experience, a domestic violence survivor for instance. You will find that real life through your own eyes and ears is more enlightening.