Wal-Mart

I shopped at Wal-Mart today for the first time in God-know's-when. I don't shop there anymore after all the hoopla about Wal-Marts destroying mom and pop stores and its contribution to sending jobs overseas. Not that I'm against outsourcing, but it's kind of interesting because Wal-Mart used to be proud of its "Made in America" products.

Anyways, just walking through the store is pretty depressing. All the stores are such a carbon copy of each other, and there's something about the lighting and the colors that's really unappealing.

But I realized something as I was standing at the checkout ... the types of people that shop there are the ones I don't see on a day-to-day basis. They might be less educated, have less money, be not very good-looking. But one thing's for sure: these people are normal. They are in the majority. And many of them have problems, whether it be money problems, mental problems, medical problems, or something else.

And working in TV, I feel like I've been living in a bubble, sheltered from the realities of everyday people. Sure, we don't make that much money in the business, but I feel like we act richer than we actually are. Most of us have a bachelor's degree, and we tend to discredit viewers who call in and are less intelligent than us. We also tend to put people on who sound good, or are important for some reason (which in some ways is understandable... you don't want some bumbling idiot who can't put a sentence together on the air). But I feel like we really don't talk to average, everyday people very often unless they do something out of the ordinary.

And we probably don't put on any poor person on air unless they've committed a crime. And even then, it's not like they have time to argue their case.

Then the case becomes... if there are so many of "those" people out there, is what we're covering really relevant to their lives? We spend a lot of time covering crime, but does that really help anyone out (execpt in the cases where someone is on the loose)? Are we doing anything to solve the problems of most people? Do we care about their problems?

Maybe that's not our task as the media. Maybe our task is just to report on the things that people are talking about. But do we know what people are talking about? I'm guessing most of us think we're average people who know what people are talking about. But for me, I can go a day or two without talking to anyone and be completely out of the loop of local news. And that seems scary to me.

It's so hard as a TV station to really get out in the community and talk to everyday people, because we have deadlines to deal with, and after quickly shooting video and interviews we have to be at the station to write and edit the stories. We don't have much time to talk with people we don't know. So we really don't know what's going on unless different organizations and people contact us first.

Which goes back to something I said earlier... when a random person calls in with a story idea or a complaint, often times there's a feeling that this person knows less than us, so we tend to shun them. Believe me, there are a lot of people who call in with ridiculous things to say, but I get worried sometimes that the right kinds of people aren't calling in with their complaints. And maybe they're too busy with their problems to contact us.

Which leads me back to Wal-Mart... why would so many people shop here after hearing all the stories about hurting small businesses and American jobs? It's because they don't have the money to care about that sort of thing. They have enough of their own problems to deal with, and if they can save money while shopping, then they'll try to do so as much as possible.

Now I'm not trying to put down the less fortunate in this post, or trying to put myself on some sortof pedastal. I'm trying to bring to light the fact that most of us tend to stay within our socioeconomic bubbles and don't know what life is like for the others. Maybe if we did know, we'd be sympathetic enough to work towards solutions that deal with their problems. If we turn a blind eye to the problems of others, things will only get worse for all of us.