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Old Posted Mar 8, 2013, 3:35 PM
AccraGhana AccraGhana is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 250
Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I'm not going to get into finger pointing about what has caused Detroit to get to where it's at today... But it's well beyond the fault of the Detroit City Council. So much attention is given to the city council by the media because it is a circus, but in reality the amount of media attention they are given relative to the actual power they have is way out of proportion.

ETA: An example of this is how during the Kwame Kilpatrick reign of terror the city council didn't even have the power to remove him from office. They could only request the governor to do it, but the governor is not legally obligated to oblige the request.
I will be your Huckleberry.

And therein lies a big part of Detroit's problem....which is the local media. Why would the media give such undue attention? Its because stories of that nature that displays apparent "dysfunction"......is what a lot of people in the local area gravitate to and the media is in the business of feeding the market what it wants to see in order to get the ratings and revenues. If people were turned off by stories of Detroit dysfunction and problems.....the media would not give it as much attention as they do. In turn, the media attention then fuels more problems for the city because it amounts to negative advertising for the city, which is picked up by national media making it harder for the region to attract what it needs due to the image of the city.

What Detroit really needs is positive reinforcement instead of the negative reinforcement that has plagued the region the last 50 years. I can remember going to Atlanta for college in the 80's and realizing that Atlanta had many of the same problems that Detroit had in regards to crime....as it once was the murder capital and lets not forget the child killings down there. However, what I found when I went down there is that despite those things the natives all seemed like they worked for the Atlanta convention and businesses bureau. I would read media accounts where reporters were always overselling the area trying to make it seem bigger and more important that the area was at that time (the metro area was only 2.5 million people then). Atlanta created a POSITIVE self fulfilling prophecy for itself and it eventually became what it falsely sold itself as at the time. Detroit was the complete opposite. Always focusing on the negative and always embracing its "worst ratings" and seeing the city as the "arm pit" of Michigan if not the nation.....and guess what.....it became that because that it what was marketed. When Detroit still had about 1.25 million people....it was bombarded with negative media attention and out state negativity. The Detroit of 1.25 million people was much better than the Detroit of today and locals treating the city back then, like it was the worst place in America (when it was not), helped to foster it becoming just that.

Last edited by AccraGhana; Mar 8, 2013 at 3:51 PM.
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