Voice of Revolution, voices of Visionaries

         Reading the first three chapters of “Voices of Revolution” sort of brought me to a dark place. I can never understand the ridicule of calling a respectable newspaper editor “bald head, miserable forehead, and comical spectacles” and calling Black Americans “thick-lipped, pig-faced, woolly-headed, baboon-looking negroes” by the mainstream the New York Herald. This happened in America, the land of freedom, where people are supposed to be free and treated with equality. And people at the time thought these crazy journalists were on the wrong side of history. It busted my bubbles of my imaginarily ideal American society.

         

         But on the other hand, I am glad. I am glad that there were still people, visionaries like William Heighton, William Llyod Garrison, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony, who saw the injustice that was so prevailing and felt they needed to do something. Their lives probably wouldn’t be any different if they did not choose to go down this path, perhaps they would be better off. Stanton was having a rewarding marriage and was financially well off, why on earth would she published this fanatic newspapers and got herself into so much trouble.

         I think that is precisely what the society is lacking nowadays. Less and less people are being kept up at night for what they see in their daily lives. As the book so cleverly points out: “If asked to identify the three most impenetrable issues facing American people today, many observers of contemporary society would still automatically list race, gender and class.” These problems still persist, and people choose to be oblivious about it.

         Actually I noticed something really interesting. I was talking to my friend, and his girlfriend was also there. It suddenly strike me that how quiet she becomes when a bunch of guys are talking, and her almost non-existing presence made me realized male is still has the dominant role in our society and some of the issues we read in the book are not that far away from us. The degree of extremities may vary, but fundamentally they are the same fun therefore they need to be addressed.

         I don’t want to spend too much words talking about how great these journalists are because that is the undebatable truth and they all had their shortcomings with no exception. I think a little bit of self-reflection could be more conducive. After reading these chapters, I decided to challenge myself to be more attentive to small little things around me. No grave crime against humanity is being committed on Ithaca College campus, but there are still things that people need to pay attention to. And I want to capture these small petty things, as people may call them. Hopefully I can write about these things and that would serve a purpose.

         One thing I really have problem with media nowadays, and something I want to avoid is reporting without compassion. All of the dissident visionaries reported with compassion and they really care about social justice. There would be no any other explanation for the work they have done. In the Hester Vaughan case, Stanton even went so far as to appeal to the governor to pardon her death penalty. That is something I see that’s lacking in the media nowadays, we talk about objectivity and neutrality everyday, but sometimes we lose sight of the social justice and humanity aspect as the reason why media exist. As long as one is not deliberately writing a story with the agenda with manipulating people’s emotion and twisting the fact, it is okay to report with compassion. But I still don’t see that as something that will happen easily in mainstream media, but very possible in independent media.

         Considering how easy disseminations of information are, our generation really has no excuse not to write more. We don’t have to have a huge subscriptions base to keep our writing going (at least for now,) all we need to do is to write, and hopefully someone will read it and be informed.

         These readings, as the semester progresses, are constantly challenging my stereotype and traditional understanding of the media. These readings have also help me forming a clearer and clearer picture of what a true media person should do. Sometimes I think this course is what helps us shape our own journalism ethics.