Let's Have a Real Conversation

I know this is supposed to be a column about the music business, but this time I'm gonna change it up a bit because there's something that's been on my mind lately that's got me stumped. Maybe all y'all who write comments on this blog can help me understand:

Since when did some random statement cooked up by people in the news media and the blogosphere start trumping words from the horse's mouth? Since when did MediaTakeOut become the voice of authority?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a guy who complains about media coverage, usually. People in this business who say they don't want to be famous or talked about are basically full of shit. I know this, because I have artists I'm working with now who get all bent out of shape when they're not recognized in the street or in a club. For years I wanted more props in newspapers and magazines, and I wasn't fond of feeling overlooked. So when someone attacks me in the media I more or less accept it as the price of fame. As long as it's just me who's being targeted and not the people I love, it's cool. I get over it.

But what's crazy to me is how stories go around in this media echo chamber of blogs, entertainment shows, tabloids and even regular newspapers that are twisted or dead wrong. One person writes something with no basis in fact, then everyone just repeats it as if it was fact, over and over again until no one questions it, even when they've already heard the full and correct story from the person they are writing about! It's like the horse's mouth has become irrelevant!

I could give you dozens of examples where that's happened in my life. But what scares me most is the hurt this kind of mindless misinformation can inflict on a whole community or movement. Take for instance the way the anchor lady on a local news channel called a drug dealer a hip-hop entrepreneur. Say what? Like you can draw a comparison between what drug dealers do, and what I do? But that became the standard description every time you saw a report about that case on the news. I am a hip-hop entrepreneur and there's no way you should get the two things mixed up.

Because that newscaster made her big, sweeping statement like it was fact, the description caught on. Next thing you know, hip hop and drug dealers become one and the same thing in people's minds. People hear something often enough and, to them, it becomes the truth. No one questions it. It's partly this kind of bad journalism that's where hip hop is getting its f***ed up name from!

It seems things have spun out of control in the last few years. I don't remember it being like this ten years ago. If the National Enquirer had a story, no one believed it. But now you'll see it picked up by blogs and newspapers all over the world. Sometimes that rag has a better chance of getting the story right than so-called respectable media outlets. Is it because we have news 24/7 and millions of websites trying to get the news first that the media doesn't care about the truth anymore?

I guess with so much noise out there everyone tries to scream the loudest and be the first to put out the story without checking the facts. I guess if the White House press guy can pass off lie after lie to Fox News and CNN and all the major networks, and get away with it, we can't expect the entertainment media to get their stories right.

Basically any journalist who asks me a question is gonna get a straight answer from me. I don't care. I got nothin' to hide. For three years now I've been telling people me and Janet are not married, or engaged. (If we were married believe me I'd have no problem telling people, and you'd hear about it anyway because the wedding reception would be the party of the century!) But it's like nobody's listening, because EVERY TIME I walk the red carpet reporters ask me the same questions: "Are you married yet?" or, "When's the wedding?" It's kinda funny, but it's also retarded.

When Page Six ran that story about my book Young, Rich and Dangerous, they added their own lil' spin to something I said and ran with it. When I saw the story I had to laugh about it. After all it was the New York Post, so it was pretty much what you'd expect. But then that story went all over the place. The blogs repeated it exactly as it was in Page Six.

No one bothered to pick up my book, turn to the correct page, and actually read that passage to check the quote. How hard can that be? Since when did newspapers start hiring people who didn't give a f*** enough to read the real source? Apparently it was too much work, since supposedly trustworthy newspapers ran stories that were totally inaccurate. It even made the Times of India! The media world has gotten so viral, that bullshit just spreads, and spreads and spreads!

The whole mess got me thinking about the bigger picture and wondering whether y'all are as worried as I am about what's been going down in the media world lately. It's also why I'm glad to have platforms like this HuffPost blog and TheMostAccess.com. I want people to hear what's up directly from me, the horse's mouth. As consumers of news we need to take back some credibility in life.

In my own small way I'll do my part by giving you, the readers, my own raw, uncut truth. That's why I wrote my life story, and that's why I write this column. I can't help it when people cut and paste my words to their own sites and take my thoughts out of context. I know there are always gonna be some people who don't want to hear the whole message. That's what happened with my last post and it'll probably happen with this one too. But at least now you're gonna know where to look.

Right here and right now we can have a conversation that's real.

Jermaine Dupri, who was named the most successful R&B producer of all time by the Guinness World Records 2007, is a Grammy-award winning music producer, president of Island Urban Records and author of Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul (Atria, October 2007). For more information about this blogger, click here.

Comments

[rawcast]

JD you on point and shout out from the ATL. You got big props from me and keep doin da damn thing!

[huffish]

"It's partly this kind of bad journalism that's where hip hop is getting its f***ed up name from!"
Your Quote Jemaine,

Its gets a F***ed up reputation from its glorification of drugs violence and guns.(Not all rap,hip hop of course) but most are of this nature. Oh and the list of rappers who have been gunned down also adds to its reputation here a list of the more renowned rappers that have been murdered within the Hip Hop community.
Jam Master Jay
Tupac Shakur
Biggie Smalls
Proof
Big L
Kadafi of outlawz
Freaky Tah of Lost Boyz
Mista-C of R.B.L.
Seagram
Stretch of Live Squad
Mausberg

[Usiku]

In my infancy of dealing with the media, I've learned to expect nothing more than I would from most businesses or professions. There will be good ones, average ones and bad ones. When they get it right, it's all good. When they make mistakes or misstatements for whatever reason, the horse's mouth is always better than the horse's ass, no matter how long it takes people to figure that out.

[epmungo]

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."

Joseph Goebbels - minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

[PanFx]

>>>One person writes something with no basis in fact, then everyone just repeats it as if it was fact, over and over again until no one questions it

[BlackandProud]

News people don't give us news anymore, they give us their opinion of the news.

I've seen republicans, democrats, whites, blacks, etc.. all treat the same news story with different angles.

One great example is Limbaughs quote about McNabb a few years ago.

Blacks felt it was a slam on a black quarterback. Whites felt it was a simple observation about a quarterback. Ex-player football commentators agreed that there is too much pressure on black QBs. Non-football player commentators said there is not any addl' pressure on black QBs.

Hate him or love him, Limbaugh unfortunately was correct: McNabb had never finished in the top 10 as a quarterback in his entire career up to that point, and was overrated (but the defense was always in the top 5).

Instead of accepting the fact, everyone slanted the news story to make whites look racist, blacks look racist, players look good, media look bad, etc...

We don't get news...we get opinion.

[JosephHill]

I'm grateful to the Mainstream Media for telling me which candidates are 'electable' so I won't have to waste a lot of time thinking and comparing what the 'unelectable' candidates are saying.

All of the time the MSM tell me (over and over and over and over....) that ALL of the candidates think such-and-such, or NONE of the candidates favors such-and-such. Nine times out of ten they are referring to only the 'top tier' candidates.

If anyone happens to mention that Dennis Kucinich (or, for that matter, Ron Paul) has a different position from "ALL" the candidates, it just confuses me. First of all, who the hell IS this guy Kucinich (or Ron Paul or Mike Gravel or....)? Next, I have to ask why he's trying to screw up a perfectly understandable election campaign. Is he (or they) trying to sabotage the electoral process? Why don't people like that just keep their mouths shut or just drop out of the race?

Thank gawd for the media...they do their best to keep things SIMPLE; and they succeed pretty well at it. It's only by accident that any of the 'unelectable' candidates gains even the teensyest acknowledgement. By and large, the media do an excellent job of telling us all that we citizens NEED to know. Who knows, in future campaigns they might even save us the trouble of voting at all.

[wrabbitt]

Don't worry because no one really takes anything they see in the media as fact or reality. The internet comes closer but, if you didn't see it or get it on Video it never happened...

[JScott]

'People hear something often enough and, to them, it becomes the truth. No one questions it. '-
That's the first rule of the ROVE/CHENEY theory-
Cheney and Bush/Rove are depending on this, no wonder this country is as f**kt up as it is.

[FOXYLADY]

I ALWAYS CHECK THE WEB NEWS...READ THE PAPERS, ALTHOUGH THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER IS GOING DOWN HILL......PERHAPS I'LL GET THE NEW YORK TIMES.....BUT THEY'VE ALSO SCREWED UP...WATCH CNN AND THEN BBC TO GET THE DIFFERENT SLANTS ON THE MOST RECENT NEWS....BUT SO OFTEN IT IS ALL A BUNCH OF "MISINFORMATION" OR "INCOMPLETE"..AND WHEN READING "HEADLINES", IF YOU WENT BY THEM ALONE YOU'D BE ALL SCREWED UP....SENS­ATIONALISM IN "BOLD LETTERS" BUT NO MEAT IN THE ARTICLES...OH WELL, WE HAVE TO READ IT ALL AND DRAW OUR OWN CONCLUSIONS....

[research]

Why is worse now then 10 years ago?

Media Consolidation.

the 5 media Oligarchies run the media to make money for the owners: The military industrial complex. GE et all.

War is a racket.

[janmB]

There is a lot of misinformation out there and some intentional and some not.

Therefore be careful.

[BlueBoomer]

Here are just a couple of NON-TRUTHS that are being accepted as fact just because someone (the media and/or a candidate) repeats it over and over again:
**********­**********­**********­**********­******
> "He/She (insert Democratic candidate's name) VOTED FOR THE WAR".
That's absurd...they voted for authorization if WMDs were found and not turned over/destroyed, etc.
BUT NONE OF THE DEMOCRATS VOTED "FOR THE WAR".
**********­**********­**********­**********­****
> Barak Obama: "I have better judgement because I was against the war from the beginning."
There's that pesky false notion again that the others voted "for" the war, WHICH THEY DID NOT.

Also, who's to say what he would have done in the same circumstances at that time... especially, given the fact that this September, when he had a chance to go on the record and vote on the BIDEN-Gelb Iraq resolution and the Lieberman-? Iran resolution, HE DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO SHOW UP...(Guess he figured it was the best way to guarantee not being wrong!)

Better judgement?...
Leadership­?...DEFINI­TELY NOT.
Hypocrite?­...ABSOLUT­ELY...
POTUS?...NOT if there are enough people out there who can see thru him and his rhetoric.
**********­**********­**********­**********­*******
> Hillary: "I have 35 years experience".
HUH?
It would be TRUE IF IT WERE JOE BIDEN OR CHRIS DODD saying it, but in this case it's Hillary Clinton, and it SIMPLY IS NOT TRUE...
Any more than the fact that I am an inherently creative person who dated artists when I was single, was married to an artist for 25 years, and am in an 11+ year relationship with an artist somehow BESTOWS ON ME THE TALENT OR SKILL TO ACTUALLY BE AN ARTIST MYSELF...
Proximity just isn't enough...Sorry Hillary.
**********­**********­**********­**********­*****
Now,if anyone out there wants to hear REAL TRUTH TO POWER, I encourge you to visit www.joebiden.com and check out his bio and his videos, especially recent ones addressing Impeachment and speech at the DNC on Saturday.

It will show you REAL EXPERIENCE (vs. psuedo-experience) and give you REAL HOPE (vs. rhetoric and psuedo-hope.)

Elevate Excellence.
BIDEN for President.
EXPERIENCE = CHANGE.

[skeeto]

First, I have no idea who you are talking about. The only thing I know about hip-hop is that my grand children seem to like it, it has a nice beat, and some of the lyrics truly shock me. Next, is the individual in question accuratly described? Not the whole group of hip hoppers, but the individual? I too am utterly confounded by the lack of truth and accuracy in the news. Some people will say anything, and some people will believe anything. All anyone can do is try to be specific themselves, and be alert to the truth.

[MrsManarlican]

Someone previously said we have a choice in what we consume, and that is absolutely true. I had a choice of majors when planning to attend college, so I chose journalism because I Wanted to write, I wanted to make a difference, I Wanted to stand on the front lines and tell it like it was and open minds, change minds. I began to realize, however, that in journalism I would be doomed to sign my name over, my truth over, and my words over, to some machine that would eat it all up, twist it all around and spit out what the media machine thinks people "want" to hear. We've all heard of the White House paying reporters to print stories favorable to a certain political cause, questions in Townhalls and press events manufactured to keep our hearts and minds on this distraction over here while our civil liberties were slowly stolen. Much like slavery in the South, the black population was kept under-educated so that they wouldn't know any better if treated poorly. We are all slaves to America, now, this great country has been robbed of its integrity and is being plundered by greedy corporate fat cats, liars, and swindlers.

Mr. Dupri, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for addressing this issue. I hope that people will stop for a moment from their own worthy opinions and pay heed to yours so honestly spoken today.