What Journalism should be about.
This one I have been meaning to post since I read it on the back of the Sydney Morning Herald last Thursday. There is no good link, it being only the last paragraph in a longish article, but here's the bit that I really really liked.
What a stinker
With news that Chanel No.5's Baz Luhrmann-directed two-minute advertisement cost $60 million to produce, and its star, Nicole Kidman, got paid $5 million for four days' work, Spike decided to take a look at what else you could create with a spare few million dollars. The World Vision website reveals that with $60 million you could sponsor 125,000 children for a year, providing them with clean water, access to medical care and proper infrastructure. As for $5 million, that would sponsor 10,400 children for a year.
Greenpeace has projected that $60 million would provide solar panels in about 3000 NSW schools. The same amount would protect forests in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands from international logging. A mere $5 million would pay for two patrol boats to combat pirate fishing in the Pacific, protecting reserves of tuna. Or then again it could be used to make another advertisement about perfume.
I love the fact that this was in a major newspaper, and think that it is the kind of thing that our journalists should be doing more of.
Y'see, in our society, we only have one method of valuing anything. Can you guess what it is?
Money.
Alright, that was a no-brainer. Money IS value, as far as just about everything in our society is concerned. 'Can you put a dollar value on it?' people ask, implying that if you can't, then it's an irrelevant conversation because what agreement on value are we going to be able to come to otherwise?.
Even in our judicial system, eternally attemping to digitise our lives- yes/no, guilty/not guilty, right/wrong- the only solution to weird justice quandries like 'how can you compensate a family for the loss of a child?' is to put a dollar value on it.
Now sure, you've got to draw a line somewhere (that's what the Justice System is all about), but I get the feeling that we are all becoming lost in a bizarre melange of binary logic.
Because once you have such a limited scope for value in a society, you get caught in a logical trap, and it works like this:
A person does some good work, and deserves rewarding by our socety, so they get given money by the processes of recompense in place. So they go out to do more good work, wanting to get more of this good Money thing.
Hang on, though- what qualifies as 'good work'? Well, let's see... I know, we will refer to the only means our society has of placing a value on anything: Money.
So doing something that will earn you more money, consists of... making more money than others. And why are we all trying to do that?
So we can have more money.
Of course, being the only thing of any value, money grants you power, the more of it you have. So, inevitably, if you have or aquire more money, you can use the power that provides you to do anything you want. So, what do you want to do?
Well, make more money, of course. After all, it is the only thing with any value, so it is the only goal worth pursuing. Oooh, and hey! You know what the good thing about having more money is?
You can use it to make more money!
It even comes to the ridiculous point where having spent an obscene amout of money on a thing as vapid as a two minute perfume commercial becomes a point of pride! One of the facts that Marketers proudly point out, saying 'Look! See how much money we spent making this? Aren't we fantastic? Mustn't we be the best perfume company in the world? After all, our Ads' cost the most, therefore they must be the best! We spend the most, therefore WE must be the best.'
See where we go with this?
It's a self sustaining feedback loop. And just like the increasing volume load and power requirements in a good set of speakers and a microphone, eventualy it's going to have to burn something out.
'Alright, 5tephe, but what good is talking about it? I mean it's not like there's anything that can be done about it. Money is the only thing that DOES have a concrete value in our society.'
True. But that's not the case in every society, or at least it hasn't been, has it?
What about the Honour system, in Feudal Japan?
Or the immense respect and value placed on the Philosophers in ancient Greece?
How about the Peerage in recent British History?
Now sure, all of those societies had their inequities, most of them immensely so. However, it does go to show that there can be definable things that hold Value and Sway within a society, that exert an influence sometimes just as great as that of Money. Perhaps we need to think about this, and come up with a new Values System, that people will be forced to recognise as having relevance to their lives. Something that everyone can pursue, irrespective of their wealth, or proportionate to it, that would grant standing in our society equal to that of great wealth. If it were a constructive thing, a thing that made our world a better place, then perhaps, eventually, we might come to a place as a society where we were willing to actually spend our money in pursuit of something of greater Value.
And that's why I love that piece of Journalism. Because it could just be a step in the right direction.
What a stinker
With news that Chanel No.5's Baz Luhrmann-directed two-minute advertisement cost $60 million to produce, and its star, Nicole Kidman, got paid $5 million for four days' work, Spike decided to take a look at what else you could create with a spare few million dollars. The World Vision website reveals that with $60 million you could sponsor 125,000 children for a year, providing them with clean water, access to medical care and proper infrastructure. As for $5 million, that would sponsor 10,400 children for a year.
Greenpeace has projected that $60 million would provide solar panels in about 3000 NSW schools. The same amount would protect forests in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands from international logging. A mere $5 million would pay for two patrol boats to combat pirate fishing in the Pacific, protecting reserves of tuna. Or then again it could be used to make another advertisement about perfume.
I love the fact that this was in a major newspaper, and think that it is the kind of thing that our journalists should be doing more of.
Y'see, in our society, we only have one method of valuing anything. Can you guess what it is?
Money.
Alright, that was a no-brainer. Money IS value, as far as just about everything in our society is concerned. 'Can you put a dollar value on it?' people ask, implying that if you can't, then it's an irrelevant conversation because what agreement on value are we going to be able to come to otherwise?.
Even in our judicial system, eternally attemping to digitise our lives- yes/no, guilty/not guilty, right/wrong- the only solution to weird justice quandries like 'how can you compensate a family for the loss of a child?' is to put a dollar value on it.
Now sure, you've got to draw a line somewhere (that's what the Justice System is all about), but I get the feeling that we are all becoming lost in a bizarre melange of binary logic.
Because once you have such a limited scope for value in a society, you get caught in a logical trap, and it works like this:
A person does some good work, and deserves rewarding by our socety, so they get given money by the processes of recompense in place. So they go out to do more good work, wanting to get more of this good Money thing.
Hang on, though- what qualifies as 'good work'? Well, let's see... I know, we will refer to the only means our society has of placing a value on anything: Money.
So doing something that will earn you more money, consists of... making more money than others. And why are we all trying to do that?
So we can have more money.
Of course, being the only thing of any value, money grants you power, the more of it you have. So, inevitably, if you have or aquire more money, you can use the power that provides you to do anything you want. So, what do you want to do?
Well, make more money, of course. After all, it is the only thing with any value, so it is the only goal worth pursuing. Oooh, and hey! You know what the good thing about having more money is?
You can use it to make more money!
It even comes to the ridiculous point where having spent an obscene amout of money on a thing as vapid as a two minute perfume commercial becomes a point of pride! One of the facts that Marketers proudly point out, saying 'Look! See how much money we spent making this? Aren't we fantastic? Mustn't we be the best perfume company in the world? After all, our Ads' cost the most, therefore they must be the best! We spend the most, therefore WE must be the best.'
See where we go with this?
It's a self sustaining feedback loop. And just like the increasing volume load and power requirements in a good set of speakers and a microphone, eventualy it's going to have to burn something out.
'Alright, 5tephe, but what good is talking about it? I mean it's not like there's anything that can be done about it. Money is the only thing that DOES have a concrete value in our society.'
True. But that's not the case in every society, or at least it hasn't been, has it?
What about the Honour system, in Feudal Japan?
Or the immense respect and value placed on the Philosophers in ancient Greece?
How about the Peerage in recent British History?
Now sure, all of those societies had their inequities, most of them immensely so. However, it does go to show that there can be definable things that hold Value and Sway within a society, that exert an influence sometimes just as great as that of Money. Perhaps we need to think about this, and come up with a new Values System, that people will be forced to recognise as having relevance to their lives. Something that everyone can pursue, irrespective of their wealth, or proportionate to it, that would grant standing in our society equal to that of great wealth. If it were a constructive thing, a thing that made our world a better place, then perhaps, eventually, we might come to a place as a society where we were willing to actually spend our money in pursuit of something of greater Value.
And that's why I love that piece of Journalism. Because it could just be a step in the right direction.