Information, knowledge, cleverness, diversity, balance…

What do media bring to the consumer?

Do media bring what the consumer is asking for? as said Xavier Couture. Do “the consumers have the power now”? Or do media bring the user what they are “supposed to”, like objective information and knowledges about what happens in the world?

Many interesting issues and concerns can be underlined regarding this topic.

First, Xavier Couture observed a lack of personnalisation in the media, which leads to a sort of uniformisation. According to him, “it is easy to go to the same direction”. However, about the difficulty to know where to find the “real truth” and the emergence of blogs, Christine Ockrent said that “blogs are not media”.   She added that bloggers are people who write “what they think, what they know, or what they think they know”.

Relating to the more general issue of good quality information, it seems that nowadays, less and less people know valid information, which raises the question of the content the mainstream media bring to users. Anita Pratap pointed out that “the content of information is diluted”, that local issues are mainly stressed out in the detriment of global information and consequently people’s knowledge might suffer from this restreined information.

Regarding the role media play in the financial crisis, it appears that media didn’t foresee the current situation and failed as a consequence to their role of informing people. However, nobody can ignore that media have to go fast and that when facing complex topics, they have to simplify in order to make the information more accessible. Being too complex and not enough entertaining wouldn’t serve the interest of media. As Xavier Couture said, ”media have to be close to the consumers” and reply to their demands.

At the end of the day, it’s really difficult for media companies to find an equilibrium between going fast, replying to the demands of the largest part of users and at the same time covering all the conflicts, bringing all the relevant information (the good one and the right one), giving users knowledge and the taste for acquiring some more… Obviously, the media “have to be responsible” and “publish correctly the information” as said Xavier Couture even if this role is not easy to assume. However, they still remain the best way to “bring to a large number of people, knowledge and ethics”.

Finally, ”thanks to the media, we know more about the world today”, as concluded Christine Ockrent.