Thursday, July 22, 2004
The Woman Meets Her Hour
News has been a staple of MTV since the channel went on the air. MTV news reports usually cover events no more significant than concert tour announcements, celebrity couplings and uncouplings, and other pop culture trifles. But give 'em credit: They are capable of getting off that dime when it matters.
The day the Iraq war started, I was in Smithfield, Virginia, on a business trip to a school. We were done by early afternoon on the war's first full day, but I wasn't flying out until the next morning, so I went back to the hotel and flipped back and forth between the NCAA men's basketball tournament and war coverage. It was weird to see so much business as usual on so many channels--unlike September 11, the war's beginning didn't stop the world at all. As I wrote in my journal, however, MTV had stopped: "MTV is not among the rest of the herd--they’ve done some fine reporting and have opened their phone lines and e-mails to war talk. 'Most of the soldiers are your age,' Kurt Loder told the audience this afternoon. Who knew MTV would come through in the clutch?" MTV's coverage that day was far different from the shocked and awed cheerleading of the major networks--it was, in a definite upset for MTV, quieter and more reflective. They weren't shoveling the Official Media Storyline. MTV that afternoon was almost like therapy for the channel's young viewers, giving them the chance to talk about what they felt, feared, and why. And I wasn't the only person to notice how out of character yet how perfectly right it was for MTV to do that.
Bill Clinton gave MTV some journalistic legitimacy during his run for the presidency in 1992 simply by talking to them like he would any other serious media outlet. (Whatever happened to Tabitha Soren, anyhow?) Ever since, people have taken MTV's "Choose or Lose" seriously because of the channel's clout with young viewers. This year is no exception. You could argue that this election matters to voters under 25 more than any other. Their futures may be greatly affected by who ends up in the White House, because it might determine whether they're ultimately subject to a draft--and never mind the other issues that matter to people in school, hoping to raise families, hoping to make a life in a country and world worth living in.
There's been a lot of talk this year about the political parties accrediting bloggers to cover the conventions right alongside more traditional journalists--and from its customary perch on the cutting edge, MTV has snagged the one blogger for whom a political convention is the perfect storm: Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette, who will file convention reports on MTV from Boston and New York. And why not? Politically, the conventions are as stylized as a kabuki dance, and as news, they're largely empty. But as a cultural event, they're part rock concert, part hockey fight, and part high-school field trip, liberally spiced with sex and alcohol. In other words, just like MTV's Spring Break and Beach House programs. Sounds like a job for Wonkette all right.
Recommended Reading: From The Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash on running the gauntlet to get into the United States. Draconian immigration regulations are making it harder and harder for non-Americans to get into the country, even when they come from allies such as Britain, and people are starting to stay away. Ash believes that they won't stay away forever, and that the world, even the Arab world, will start to think better of us under President Kerry. Which is why Osama Bin Laden is most likely a Bush man.
News has been a staple of MTV since the channel went on the air. MTV news reports usually cover events no more significant than concert tour announcements, celebrity couplings and uncouplings, and other pop culture trifles. But give 'em credit: They are capable of getting off that dime when it matters.
The day the Iraq war started, I was in Smithfield, Virginia, on a business trip to a school. We were done by early afternoon on the war's first full day, but I wasn't flying out until the next morning, so I went back to the hotel and flipped back and forth between the NCAA men's basketball tournament and war coverage. It was weird to see so much business as usual on so many channels--unlike September 11, the war's beginning didn't stop the world at all. As I wrote in my journal, however, MTV had stopped: "MTV is not among the rest of the herd--they’ve done some fine reporting and have opened their phone lines and e-mails to war talk. 'Most of the soldiers are your age,' Kurt Loder told the audience this afternoon. Who knew MTV would come through in the clutch?" MTV's coverage that day was far different from the shocked and awed cheerleading of the major networks--it was, in a definite upset for MTV, quieter and more reflective. They weren't shoveling the Official Media Storyline. MTV that afternoon was almost like therapy for the channel's young viewers, giving them the chance to talk about what they felt, feared, and why. And I wasn't the only person to notice how out of character yet how perfectly right it was for MTV to do that.
Bill Clinton gave MTV some journalistic legitimacy during his run for the presidency in 1992 simply by talking to them like he would any other serious media outlet. (Whatever happened to Tabitha Soren, anyhow?) Ever since, people have taken MTV's "Choose or Lose" seriously because of the channel's clout with young viewers. This year is no exception. You could argue that this election matters to voters under 25 more than any other. Their futures may be greatly affected by who ends up in the White House, because it might determine whether they're ultimately subject to a draft--and never mind the other issues that matter to people in school, hoping to raise families, hoping to make a life in a country and world worth living in.
There's been a lot of talk this year about the political parties accrediting bloggers to cover the conventions right alongside more traditional journalists--and from its customary perch on the cutting edge, MTV has snagged the one blogger for whom a political convention is the perfect storm: Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette, who will file convention reports on MTV from Boston and New York. And why not? Politically, the conventions are as stylized as a kabuki dance, and as news, they're largely empty. But as a cultural event, they're part rock concert, part hockey fight, and part high-school field trip, liberally spiced with sex and alcohol. In other words, just like MTV's Spring Break and Beach House programs. Sounds like a job for Wonkette all right.
Recommended Reading: From The Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash on running the gauntlet to get into the United States. Draconian immigration regulations are making it harder and harder for non-Americans to get into the country, even when they come from allies such as Britain, and people are starting to stay away. Ash believes that they won't stay away forever, and that the world, even the Arab world, will start to think better of us under President Kerry. Which is why Osama Bin Laden is most likely a Bush man.
