International Perception
My wife and I just got back from an alchohol induced, salt-chlorinated water adventure in Mexico. To my surprise while flipping through the channels in our room up popped channel 7 news from Detroit. Wow, I proclaimed, I cant beleive that we get Detroit News all the way down here!
After watching for a couple minutes I realized that this channel was the American channel and the Detroit news was chosen at that time slot.
So imagine you are in Mexico from England, or France, or Australia and you are flipping through channels while your loved one rubs blue sun burn healing stuff on your back and you see News from Detroit. You sit and watch for a few minutes because you have always wondered what its like in Detroit. After 15 or 20 minuts you realize wow, I never want to go to Detroit! The streets are not safe cause the cops have to work the halls of the schools!
I sat and watched the news from an out siders perspective last week. I was shocked! Detroit looks bad, real bad. As I wandered around the resort and met people from around the world I proudly told them I was from Detroit. Now I know why every one of those people would cringe, or ask “really, you live in Detroit”?
We were upset when Jimmy Kimmel when he made fun of Detroit. We need to focus on ourselves first. The negative reporting of the city of Detroit by the Detroit News Media needs to stop! They are making Detroit look really bad. Every city has issues. Most cities sweep these issues under the rug to manage their perception. The Detroit News Media forced us to where our issues on our sleeves.
I’m not one for censoring the news or trying to cover up the reality of what is really going on in Detroit. At the same time, I totally agree with you that there are simply not enough positive stories about Detroit’s “renewal.”
There are plenty of opportunities to talk about the good things happening in Detroit. Maybe negative news drives ratings? I’m not really sure. It is sad that Detroit’s image has to suffer because of it.
the news is simply another form of entertainment, and for some reason people find all the problems with the city entertaining… if that weren’t true, the media in our city wouldn’t report what they do…
I totally agree. OTOH, watch the Chicago news (I know WGN can be picked up on Comcast) and you’ll see a lot of daily murder news as well. But when it happens in Detroit, it just reinforces preconceived notions of “Murder City”.
I think Detroit has the most sensationalist local news I’ve seen. Look at news in other cities and you won’t see nearly as much overhyped talk. I’ve seen news in many other cities and it’s not even close. Channel 4 WDIV is probably the worst offender. I’m actually going to do a blog post about them on http://www.detroitessentials.com when I get the time.