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Technical Specifications
- Lectern
- Projector with laptop hookup (DisplayPort out), preferably with sound
- Lapel microphone
Marketing Materials
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CHASE WHITESIDE
Newstainment: Journalism and Discourse in the Information Age
Chase Whiteside is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and the founder of New Left Media. Whiteside is perhaps best known for his coverage of the evolving "Tea Party" movement. His short films, which IndieWire called "a perfect example of where documentary form and style is headed," have been seen more than 6 million times online and featured in whole or in part by the BBC, MTV, Bill Moyers' Journal, The Ed Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Current TV, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Roger Ebert's Journal, The Nation, and the Daily Show's Indecision Blog, among others. The Advocate calls him an "ambitious gay reporter;" Instinct Magazine selected him as a 2010 "Leading Man" for his coverage of gay rights issues. Whiteside blogs for the Huffington Post and is a contributor to MTV's 365Gay.com. He is currently writing a book about the deteriorating state of the news media to be published by Picador in Spring 2012.
- All programs are full multimedia presentations including supporting video clips and stills.
Newstainment: Journalism and Discourse in the Information Age
How do you take your news?
Today, Tweets and Facebook status updates can foment political change in authoritarian countries, but when tasked with explaining complex issues and legislation here in America, they fall tragically short. Chase Whiteside of New Left Media has been in the trenches of our fevered political debate, urging the sign-carriers on both the Right and the Left to abandon their talking points for a real conversation about the concerns we face today. But despite good intentions, the public is hostage to its news media.—How can we be informed participants in a democracy without quality information and knowledge about our government? How will we progress if we can't even agree on the facts from which to premise public debate, over things like healthcare reform or the size of government?
Building on the ideas of Marshal McLuhan and Neil Postman, Whiteside looks at the news media today and how it completely fails to serve political discourse. The narratives that drive our national conversation are good for television ratings but bad for our democracy, encouraging hyperbole and partisanship at the expense of accuracy and nuance. The problem is that our ways of getting the news – cable, Twitter, rapidly-refreshed blogs, and news aggregators – inherently distorts the information it carries. Too fast, too brief, and too fragmented, today's news is decreasing the attention spans of an already attention deficit nation.
With skepticism and wit, Whiteside performs an urgent intervention on the habits of both news consumers and news producers in the Internet age, offering a vision for a better press and a more informed democracy.
Echo Chambers: How Too Much Media Choice Hardens Partisan Divisions
Today's digital media landscape gives news consumers an unprecedented abundance of choice. Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three broadcast networks over dinner, or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our news from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. With so many options, our tendency is to choose only the news we agree with, which merely reinforces our preexisting notions of how the world works. People who have a news diet of Fox News and the Drudge Report hold an entirely separate set of truths than people who prefer MSNBC and the Huffington Post.
The result is hardening partisan divisions as voters become increasingly set in their ways. Public debate about the issues facing our democracy—like healthcare reform or the size of government—has become more polarized. Progress in Washington has slowed, and most votes in congress divide strictly along party lines. Whiteside will screen and discuss video from his coverage of the "Tea Party" movement as an example of echo chamber politics, and explore the leftward movement of outlets like MSNBC. Encouraging listeners to seek objective news sources, he will discuss how the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for a functioning democracy.
Modern LGBT Representations in Media
With shows like Glee and Modern Family popular on television, and new progress on gay rights issues around the country, it can be hard to see the problems that still exist with LGBT representation in the media. On television, there is a tendency to stereotype, sanitize, and simplify gay characters to broaden a show's appeal. In interviews where sexuality is not the topic, the sexual orientation of guests is frequently invoked. Using video clips and screen grabs, Whiteside will contrast news stories which refer to gays as "activists" with "agendas" with coverage of other social groups, and break down the television advertisements used in California and Maine to promote ballot initiatives restricting marriage to same-sex couples. The importance of accurate visibility of gays in media will be discussed alongside the harmful effects that subtle—and not so subtle—biases have on the gay community.
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