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Geek Chic

So I go to CBSNews.com and I click on Science and Technology to see what is going on in such areas. The first thing I see is Geek Chic, a segment that was on The Early Show discussing technology in today's fashion. First of all this is not news. I'm sorry but fashion does not count as news worthy material and should especially not be the top article for the science and technology section, which is supposed to tell us the cutting edge of human discovery. We should be hearing about new advances in medicine or the next space shuttle launch not what to wear if you are a nerd.

After I watched this program it turned out that there were only 3 unique technologies (if that's what they can be called) being shown. The first was an integrated button system to control an ipod. This was shown on the first two models. The third had on a jacket with many pockets to hold all their portable technology and he had on military tactical pants where the "geek friendly technology" was once again a plethora of pockets. His shoes had a device that talked to his ipod and recorded his running stats. The final model had on a holster for all of his technologies which goes back to the "need" for pockets. None of this was crucial information for me to know.

The thing that should be known about these models is that none of them were by any stretch of the imagination attractive people. The were less than average Joes. This automatically sends out the message "if you want to be trendy don't buy these items." These items are not fashionable and CBS wanted you to know it. The probably were sponsored by these companies to show their products and they figured they would kill a few birds with one stone. The final model even has his pants high, his socks over his pants and tape on his glasses. These people knew what they were doing, deliberately telling the majority of the public not to buy these items but they still wanted the advertising dollars. This segment was five minutes out of a program that should be much more informative than this.

Smith talks about this problem in his chapter on the business of journalism. He points out a few cases where profitable influences played a part in the determination of what is news. Here, CBS wanted to make money so they showed a bunch of products that they really didn't care about in a way that showed their feelings but still would get them paid. Smith states on page 317 that "in a democracy, citizens must know what's going." and it is the news media's job to let them know. CBS is not doing this when showing such segments.