Representations of Steve Jobs in The Media

Representations of Steve Jobs in The Media

By: Nicole Bloms & Kelly McInnis

Steve Jobs, the founder and brains behind Apple Inc. died on October 5^th 2011. When he died, the entire world mourned his passing. Media outlets around the world ran stories about his legacy that hailed his creative genius. But how did the media’s representations of Jobs’ passing differ? We found and compared two online articles with very different opinions on Steve Job’s legacy. The links to these articles are as follows:

-Fox 9 News Minneapolis: “Job’s Inventions Form Creative Legacy”

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/minnesota/jobs-inventions-form-creative-legacy-oct-6-2011 - ixzz1c0KWDDY2

-CNN’s Belief Blog: “Are We Turning Steve Jobs Into A Saint?”

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/26/short-takes-are-we-turning-steve-jobs-into-a-saint/?hpt=us_t3

The Fox 9 News Station in Minneapolis ran a story the day after Jobs’ death, which talked about the inventor’s legacy. The Fox 9 news reporter interviewed a few people who use Apple products, including John Lenker, an Internet consultant who “owes his career to what Jobs helped evolve.” Lenker said, “Steve Jobs enabled the entire planet to be creative in a way they never could have before.” The article highly praises Jobs, but its praise basically comes from one point of view. The reporter only interviewed people like Lenker, who use Apple products, and who owe their success to these products. These people likely view Jobs much more favorably than people who do not personally benefit from Jobs’ computers.

Also, this representation of Steve Jobs’ legacy displays The Fox 9 Station’s own point of view. Fox 9, a notably conservative station, is likely to value strong entrepreneurs and capitalists, like Jobs, slightly more than a liberally biased station would. This viewpoint fits into the overall conservative mindset that government should be small and that individual success should be highly valued. Because of the Fox 9 Station’s inherent ideology, it is not surprising that they only had good things to say about Jobs.

This Fox 9 online article is based off of a video that the station on October 6^th. The images in this video reinforce the high status that Fox gives Jobs. The video opens with footage (recorded on the iPad and iPhone) of a memorial outside an Apple store in New York. Candles, apples, flowers, and a sign that says, “Keep thinking different,” are displayed on the steps outside the store. The video then jumps to the Firstech store in Minneapolis where more flowers adorn the entrance. This Minneapolis store is significant because it was the first Apple retailer in the world, and was handpicked by Jobs himself in 1977. The video footage reinforces the singular viewpoint of Apple users displayed by the text in the Fox 9 station’s article.

Fox 9 was not the only station to highly praise Jobs. Many news outlets around the world ran favorable and mournful articles. On October 26th, CNN’s Belief Blog, a religious blog that runs on the CNN site, posted an article that responded to the media’s high praise, and had less favorable things to say.

This blog post was titled “Short Takes: Are We Turning Steve Jobs Into A Saint?” The post is very different than most of the articles on Jobs’ passing. This blog article has four prominent but very diverse people weighing in on the media uproar after Job’s death. These contributors include a Professor of Religion, a Jesuit Priest, the editor of CultofMac.com, a news site that tracks Apple products, and finally a Professor of Sociology.

Where as other articles broadcast Jobs’ success and honorary status, this article discusses not only his positive attributes but also the negative. Overall, this blog post was critical of how the general media turned Steve Jobs into an almost “superhuman, glorified cultural hero,” and worshiped him like a “cult of celebrity.” The blog sees the public reaction to Steve Jobs’ death as yet another example of modern America’s tendency to worship celebrity figures. The blog states that “As more and more people move away from conventional religions and identify as “nones” (those who choose to claim “no religion” in polls and surveys), celebrity worship and other cultural forms of sacred commitment and meaning will assume an even greater market share of the spiritual marketplace.” In this way, the Belief Blog separates the cultural reaction to Jobs’ death from the actual man himself. In their opinion, the media’s reaction to Jobs’ passing is more representative of a cultural phenomenon of celebrity veneration, rather then as strictly a testament to Steve Job’s individual greatness.

The Belief Blog is CNN’s religious blog, and it explores the current issues of today from a distinctly religious perspective that is not seen in regular news outlets. This blog did praise Jobs as an important and successful inventor, but they were also critical of how he is being elevated to almost saintly status. James Martin, the Jesuit Priest who helped write this blog post, discussed how saints must not only be viewed highly by society, but saints must also live a worthy, charitable life. “That is a rock-bottom requirement for a saint: kindness,” the Priest said. Also, the Priest discussed a new biography of Steve Jobs that shows the man in a more honest light. He admits that Steve Jobs was definitely a genius, but “Walter Isaacson’s new biography...is chock full of incidents of its subject’s less-than-charitable behavior.” Therefore, in this Priest’s opinion, Steve Jobs does not meet both requirements for sainthood.

To be fair, the mass media is praising Steve Jobs very highly, but it is not the popular opinion that Jobs should be signed up for Christian Sainthood. It may be true that Steve Jobs was not the most charitable person ever, but the Priest’s statement of this fact seems almost nit-picky, as though he is searching to find a fault in the man. The Priest’s opinion, although very interesting, seems almost defensive, and cannot be separated from his own religious beliefs.

Both Fox 9’s and The Belief Blog’s views of Steve Job’s passing were very interesting to look at. The Fox 9 Station’s article and video were clearly much different than the article on CNN’s Belief Blog. The Fox 9 article samples a small, biased population of Apple users to create a story that glorifies Steve Jobs and the things that he created. The Belief Blog, on the other hand, takes a step back and analyses what they perceive to be the over-the-top glorification of Steve Jobs. As a religious source, they almost seemed to feel threatened by the great outpour of public emotion for Jobs. However, their criticism was not directed at the man himself, but rather at a worrisome cultural phenomenon they observe in America’s reaction to Job’s passing. Both of these stories are partial, they only tell one carefully chosen side of the story. Both articles are also rhetorical in that they reveal the ideology of the source. Fox 9 has a conservative ideology, and the Belief Blog has a strong religious, specifically Christian, ideology. From the language these two articles use, to the contributors who were chosen to write them, these articles cannot be separated from their sources’ points of view.