Journalists are currently hard to believe. There's so much skepticism around what they're reporting, that sometimes the truth is skewed with just a fanciful exaggeration trying to elicit some interest from the world. But think about why journalists do this? Why do they have to go to such great lengths to make anyone interested in what they have to say? Maybe because they're trying to show their stories to the wrong audience.
The goals of most good journalists are to expose stories that are not common knowledge. Telling the stories can just end there, or they can have a purpose of trying to get people to take action and fix the problems that are happening. Journalists are trying to reach people who can actually make a difference, people who they think have the immediate power to make create a change.
The people who seem to be able to help are those with money, in the governement, and individual adults who can be effective as a group. But I wonder if this is the right crowd.
It's true, you will get the few government officials intrigued, you will get a few altruistic celebrities to help out, and you'll also get a bunch of people tweeting something and making a big stink. But in the end, these things sort of die out before they're solved.
Has anyone thought of kids? Let's take the movie Inception that we've all seen as a trendy analogy to what I'm about to talk about. In the movie, they have to persuade a person to genuinely believe in an idea. They do this by "inception," by planting the idea in a dream (well, if you want to get technical about the movie, it was a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside of another dream...). But think about kids. They live in a world that is less polluted by what society deems as responsibilities, they are much less desensitized by extreme issues, and if you can show them the problems out there, the goals in their lives may be less about becoming the next G.I. Joe fighting terrorists or becoming rich plastic surgeons, but more about fixing the issues that already exist in their world.
What if journalists and photo journalists especially, can paint a picture of current events that affect the world, which eventually becomes something a kid really becomes aware of. What if all kids understood all of the problems going on, when they became old enough to act upon these ideas, could it be much more effective? Why try to persuade someone with a home, kids, investments, money, lobbyists, to do something out of the ordinary? Instead, get kids to understand that the world isn't perfect, and that they need to already have experience looking outside of the little sheltered bubble they live in, so that when it's time to act, journalists don't need to persuade them to think out of their learned abilities.
Journalists persuading adults who didn't grow up understanding issues results in exaggerations, which lessens credibility, which leads to no action. But journalists who can persuade adults who have lived their whole lives understanding the issues since they were little, will need much less sugar coating.
I think it's worth thinking about shifting classes for kids from past historic problems, and give them more wakeup calls on what's happening right now, as brutal as it may be. If you want to change the future, you have to start from who the future is.
* the photo at top is part of a series of photographs I took at the San Quentin Prison, telling the story of high turnover inmates. One day I hope to speak to kids about the program, to show them a brighter side of the prison system that can make a difference in the world. See more here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinetic/sets/72157615878263928/with/3384729400/
