"The decline in government services -- and steeply rising fees -- go unreported by cable TV networks broadcasting live speeches by our leaders pledging to rebuild schools and hospitals in Iraq." - Joel Connelly Article
Are we angry at the media, our leaders or ourselves? Joel writes an excellent article on the power of visuals, the use of media coverage to tell a story and the hypocrisy of the Bush administration. However, the jet stunt is nothing new nor is it anything we can change.
Visuals are the most important element of a story in many ways because the media can not change the visuals.
As we write and present talking heads to the media we are debated, edited, clipped and cut. Our letters and prose can be distorted and talked over by the media. Our opposition can respond. However, a good image always gets play. The text or voice around the image can change but the visual slips into the mainstream as is. Everyone is working on image these days. I disagree with Joel that budget cuts are not visual. We are carrying a lot of writers and policy people in the nonprofit movement but not nearly enough photographers, communication staff and video production capacity. As a movement, environmentalists have a compelling visual story but we do not provide the images to support our narrative. How often do groups spend a full year of staff salary on an issue to crank out a report but release findings without $1000 worth of images?
Lesson. Communication, visuals and content matter. Unfortunately, it is often in that order and our movement refuses to engage in this reality. Our lack of telling visual stories may be directly correlated to our loss of the youth (learn more by seeing than reading) in the membership ranks.
