The most misused word in the media-public relationship is the word “we”.
Here are a couple of common examples:
Dwight Garner, The New York Times: “Why are we willing to shell out $24.95 at the local Barnes & Noble to read about someone else’s pets?” Kyra Phillips: CNN: “I mean, are we just so pathetic and so lonely that we have to live through people like Paris Hilton?”
Garner was writing about a cluster of books on the best-seller lists that told stories about animals. His specific interest was in “Water for Elephants,” which has sold about 250,000 copies, in a nation of 303 million. That means 302,750,000 people have bought “Water for Elephants.”
“We”?
Kyra Phillips was one of a group of media professionals talking about media coverage of the hot celebrity Paris Hilton’s on-again off-again time in jail.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I should be counted among those who are so pathetic and lonely that I have to live through people like Paris Hilton. I have the Nielsen Ratings to back me up. Hilton’s celebrity is essentially a creation of magazines like “People,” whose circulation is a little under 4 million, in a nation of 303 million, and of cable television breathlessers like “Access Hollywood,” whose Nielsens don’t reach a 3 rating, in the nation’s television universe of about 112 million homes. A Neilsen rating point is one percent of the national television universe. A rating of 3 means that 97 percent of the universe is doing something else.
“We”? Not me. If I am going to do some living through somebody else, it would be somebody more like Willie Nelson. A part of me aspires to sound like him and look like him. Seldom has so compelling a voice so nearly matched the persona. I’ll bet I could find at least 10 million people in the country who would agree with me, and buy 250,000 copies of his latest CD.
But, we? Don’t think so. They don’t need us anyway. Dwight Garner was writing about “Water for Elephants” because its author, Sara Gruen, had signed a contract to write two more books, for which she would be paid an advance of five million dollars.
Therein lies platinum proof of the Second Law of Media: the media is an exercise in the power of small numbers. If just one-half of one percent of the population buys a copy of each of Gruen’s books, a $5 million advance will look like a steal, and the publisher, Spiegel & Grau, will be delirious with joy. If one-third of one percent of the population buys a Willie Nelson CD, Willie will fiddle for joy. If one percent of the nation’s high schools adopt “Reading Media,” my proposed contemporary media studies text, I will get my own monogrammed chair on “Oprah.”
Then a media pundit would go on the air and say, “This is the book we have been waiting for,” and of course that would be wrong. The correct word, in any discussion of the media-public relationship, is “you.” If Kyra Phillips would just look into the CNN camera and say, “Are you just so pathetic, etc.,” it would provide 95 percent of the 250,000 watching CNN at that moment the opportunity to yell back, “No!”
That leaves just five percent – 12,500 viewers of this particular program – to cuss out Phillips and defend Paris. Not many. But they’re out there, hard as that may be to believe, and they’re enough. Enough to make Paris famous, and to mislead media pundits into opining that somehow paying attention to Paris Hilton represents a bad end for us all. The next time you hear someone say that on television, or read it in a newspaper, fire off an email explaining the Second Law of Media.