Peabody-Smithgall Lecturer Finds the Good in Media Saturation

ATHENS, GA_ When President and CEO of The Paley Center for Media, Pat Mitchell, lies down to sleep at night, she and her husband hide their BlackBerries under the covers so they can continue to send emails without the other knowing. As the speaker at the second annual Peabody-Smithgall Lecture today, Mitchell used anecdotes such as this to communicate to the audience how technology has aided media in consuming our lives.

The Peabody-Smithgall Lecture is held to honor Lessie and Charles Smithgall for their contributions to the University of Georgia and is sponsored by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Mitchell, a UGA alumna, has personally had a great deal of experience with media. Starting as a network correspondent and moving her way up the ranks to becoming the first ever female president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Mitchell has seen how technology has developed and transformed media and the public square over the years.

“I think of us as living in a completely media-saturated world,” Mitchell told the audience of approximately 75 in the University of Georgia Chapel this afternoon.

According to Mitchell, the internet and other technological developments have enlarged the public square, or the reach of the media, to a global scale. She joked that if the public square had been as big as it is today while she was in college, the audience would be much more aware of her college escapades.

“Media has created a very different public square,” Mitchell said, “Our whole lives have turned into a public square.”

When Mitchell asked the audience if anyone had “Googled" her in an effort to emphasize the growth of the public square, many hands were raised. She attributed the difference between those who raised their hands and those who didn’t to the fact that she considers there to be two different kinds of people in the world: digital natives and digital immigrants.

“Digital natives were born with a mobile phone in their hand,” Mitchell said. Digital immigrants, though, are “just never going to be as good at multitasking”.

Despite the differences between the two groups in their abilities to operate technology, the groups still have equal access to the media. “Digital natives and digital immigrants live side by side,” Mitchell said, “all of us with equal access.”

It is this equal access, Mitchell told the audience, that brings our country closer to perfect democracy.

Equal access is not the only positive outcome of technology enlarging the public square. Observations of other countries around the world have revealed to Mitchell that although technology has flooded media into almost every aspect of our lives, it has also aided society.

According to Mitchell, in India, people are now actually texting prayers rather than venturing out into dangerously large crowds surrounding temples. Some cell phones in Japan are beginning to include breathalyzers to help keep drunk drivers off of the roads. In Afghanistan, 40 percent more women voted in their last election after their government used cell phones to encourage voting.

Mitchell believes that technology enhancing media and enlarging the public square can positively affect society, but she worries about if people are using the enhanced media to access the right kind of information or using it to its fullest potential.

“More Americans between ages 18 and 25 voted for their favorite American Idol than have ever voted in a presidential election,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell does not necessarily enjoy all of the ways technology has helped in creating a media-saturated world, but she understands how helpful this abundance of media is and could be to society. “It can be just as powerful for changing things for the good,” Mitchell said.