The 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil is an attention-getter. It should be. Just about everyone in the world has a representative, a dog in the fight. Pride’s at stake. Honor, too. Olympic competition is newsworthy. As a result, even those who can’t afford to go to the games, who pay only passing attention, and who profess disinterest will have received some information about Olympic activities during and after the events.
Scores, records, and winners seem to be the heart of Olympic news, but something else goes on that shapes our minds about place, in this instance, Brazil in general and Rio in particular. The billions of people who cannot make a trip to the venues rely on literally thousands of reporters stationed both in Rio and elsewhere. In filing their reports, they become the avatars of personal experience. They determine the focus of attention. They project mental maps into the minds of everyone not present.
Think of how information has changed. Generals in ancient wars had to rely on scouts whose reports of invading armies took days to receive. Explorers’ reports in the Renaissance took months to reach home. In contrast, we live a life of almost instant information-sharing. Yet, as incomplete as any centuries-old and slow system of communication about the nature of a place might have been, so our own rapid conveyances of information are also incomplete, simply because individual media outlets focus attention they deem worthy of coverage.
Are you a reporter? Want to spend time talking about Zika in Brazil? Go ahead. Use a couple of news segments; show someone spraying insecticide. But consider the consequences of your news reports. The sweep of a camera isn’t the sweep of moveable eyes in a swiveling human head. There is no accompanying touch, smell, or taste, and sound is limited by what a microphone picks up and a sound editor allows. And the limited focus of your report is all the viewer has as a basis for a mental map. (“Brazil! No not me. Did you see those reports on Zika?”) Regardless of news coverage, place becomes a caricature drawn by the preferences and needs of reporters and their employers.
In short, though we acquire information faster than anyone could have received it from runners or horseback or camel riders, we still have incomplete information. Yet, just as those from centuries ago mapped places that they never visited on the basis of reports, so we do the same. And as they trusted their reporters, we often trust ours to give us a sense of place. But in a highly competitive world where a daily Olympics occurs as the competition among news organizations and their reporters from every nation, we focus on what both reporters and cameras tell us is important about place.
Scores, records, and winners seem to be the heart of Olympic news, but something else goes on that shapes our minds about place, in this instance, Brazil in general and Rio in particular. The billions of people who cannot make a trip to the venues rely on literally thousands of reporters stationed both in Rio and elsewhere. In filing their reports, they become the avatars of personal experience. They determine the focus of attention. They project mental maps into the minds of everyone not present.
Think of how information has changed. Generals in ancient wars had to rely on scouts whose reports of invading armies took days to receive. Explorers’ reports in the Renaissance took months to reach home. In contrast, we live a life of almost instant information-sharing. Yet, as incomplete as any centuries-old and slow system of communication about the nature of a place might have been, so our own rapid conveyances of information are also incomplete, simply because individual media outlets focus attention they deem worthy of coverage.
Are you a reporter? Want to spend time talking about Zika in Brazil? Go ahead. Use a couple of news segments; show someone spraying insecticide. But consider the consequences of your news reports. The sweep of a camera isn’t the sweep of moveable eyes in a swiveling human head. There is no accompanying touch, smell, or taste, and sound is limited by what a microphone picks up and a sound editor allows. And the limited focus of your report is all the viewer has as a basis for a mental map. (“Brazil! No not me. Did you see those reports on Zika?”) Regardless of news coverage, place becomes a caricature drawn by the preferences and needs of reporters and their employers.
In short, though we acquire information faster than anyone could have received it from runners or horseback or camel riders, we still have incomplete information. Yet, just as those from centuries ago mapped places that they never visited on the basis of reports, so we do the same. And as they trusted their reporters, we often trust ours to give us a sense of place. But in a highly competitive world where a daily Olympics occurs as the competition among news organizations and their reporters from every nation, we focus on what both reporters and cameras tell us is important about place.
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