preview

What Is A Single Voice: Fact Or Fiction?

Decent Essays

I already mentioned several media by which competing discourses of the past, and of risk, reach their audience and attempt to gain recognition and influence the greater historical narrative of the group. According to Morris-Suzuki (2005), out of the “Kaleidoscopic mass of fragments we make and remake patterns of understanding which explain the origins and nature of the world in which we live. And doing this, we define and redefine the place that we occupy in that world,” (Morris-Suzuki 2005:2). We do not learn the story of disasters from a single source or a single voice. Even when a news outlet is the sole medium to learn of such an event, the format of news reporting for periodic broadcast and for twenty-four hour news channels will share …show more content…

Each medium speaks to the needs of its audience through a narrative modified by the medium’s advantages and limitations. The audiences of several media often overlap, especially when their shared interest focuses on a specific topic or even. For example, a newspaper must describe a scene in words and, usually, no more than one photograph. However, if television news broadcasts features a single image with scrolling words for the viewer to read, it would be a wasteful use of television’s capabilities to transmit moving images and sound, to visually place the audience directly in the scene and to meet, metaphorically, the people involved. Conversely, newspapers offer reporters a chance at literary art combined with information, painting the picture with words. The information in newspapers is also easier to read, reread, and clip for later …show more content…

This offers the advantage of directly accessing the words and thoughts of individuals who were present to witness the disaster and, in doing so, gives power to the voices of survivors who may wish to speak for themselves rather than have their voices filtered through political leaders and viewership-focused media. While this type of access brings the audience closer to survivors, only a short distance removed from face-to-face conversations, it remains important to note that even individual survivors possess motives for why they tell their story in a particular way and that it is not just the media and politicians with such influences and representational

Get Access