{"id":53101,"date":"2012-12-19T11:40:41","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T16:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53101"},"modified":"2012-12-19T14:58:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T19:58:18","slug":"53101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/19\/53101\/","title":{"rendered":"When News and Markets Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days after 6 adults and 20 elementary school children were shot and killed in Newtown, CT, the Miami Herald<\/em> homepage looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the left side of this screenshot, the Herald shows images of the dead and notes how \u201cAmerica mourns\u201d their loss. At right, one of their five-or-so rotating advertisements shows a large handgun and links to a website for the U.S. Concealed Carry Association<\/a>, a company that sells \u2013 among other things \u2013 strategies to quickly arrange for conceal carry permits in your state.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s tagline: \u201cKnowledge is your best weapon. Preparation is your best defense.\u201d Apparently, to a segment of the population this visual coupling advertisement read something like, \u201cMourn for now. Lock and load for next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That such a provocative advertisement would appear in close proximity to a sensitive news story is unlikely to be accidental. News outlets are quite smart about what they post \u2013 and where \u2013 both in terms of news products and paid content.<\/p>\n

But this juxtaposition of weaponry and those who have died from such products represents more than a short-term economic choice. Instead, it reflects the fact that we live in a culture that strongly supports gun ownership and loose gun control laws<\/a>.\u00a0 Had the newspaper thought that such an advertisement — published at this particular time and in this particular way — would ostracize their audience or advertisers, they wouldn\u2019t have run it.<\/p>\n

Some call the media the \u201cfourth estate\u201d \u2013 an institution that, alongside the courts, the oval office, and congress, keeps our country in balance. The juxtaposition in that screenshot, however, calls into question this role for the traditional media. Instead, they are simply reflecting the status quo, one largely controlled by those who are already in power. If this is the case, we can\u2019t count on the media to check the power elite.\u00a0 Any real change, then, is going to come from collective action and alternative media.<\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

Robert Gutsche Jr.<\/a>\u00a0is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. His research deals with the sociology of news and news as a cultural artifact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days after 6 adults and 20 elementary school children were shot and killed in Newtown, CT, the Miami Herald homepage looked like this: On the left side of this screenshot, the Herald shows images of the dead and notes how \u201cAmerica mourns\u201d their loss. At right, one of their five-or-so rotating advertisements shows a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,23703,8118,85,250,693],"class_list":["post-53101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-politics","tag-guns","tag-public-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53115,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53101\/revisions\/53115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}