COMM 150: Gatekeepers, the wisdom of crowds and Wikipedia

Content advisory: Some language in the song below is offensive.

One last concept I want to leave with you this semester ... and one I think I need to because I don't like the way John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" handles the idea of gatekeepers. Not that he's wrong. He isn't. But I like the Wikipedia article on gatekeeping better. For one thing, it's more recent. And it's more detailed. Says Wikipedia:

A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate. In the late 20th century the term came into metaphorical use, referring to individuals who decide whether a given message will be distributed by a mass medium.

But it's not limited to mass media:

Gatekeepers serve several different purposes such as academic admissions, financial advising, and news editing. Academic admissions plays a vital role in every student's life. They look at qualifications such as test scores, race, social class, grades, family connections, and even athletic ability. Where this internal gatekeeping role is unwanted, open admissions can externalize it.

Various gatekeeping organizations administer professional certifications to protect clients from fraud and unqualified advice, for example for financial advisers.

A news editor picks out what stories would be most informative and popular. For example, a presidential resignation would be on the ffront page of a newspaper rather than a celebrity break-up except for those specializing in the latter.

Wikipedia is an example of gatekeeping in action, by the way. It began as a way of getting around the gatekeepers -- the experts -- by relying on everyday people to correct each other. Now it has gatekeepers, in the form of editors, discussion boards and procedures for making corrections and ironing out disputes.

Here's another example of gatekeeping. It's a Christmas story, even.

In 2007 the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) censored one of Great Britain's chart-topping Christmas songs. And, of course, the story went world-wide. The song is "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues, an English-Irish punk band featuring the late vocalist Kirsty McColl, and it was No. 1 in holiday charts even before the controversy.
A little back story. The Pogues -- and still are -- were a punk Irish band of the 1980s, fronted by Shane MacGowan. Sort of an early version of bands like Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys today. In 1987 they cut "Fairytale" as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty McColl, who later died in a boating accident. "Fairytale" has become a very popular Christmas novelty song in the U.K. and Ireland. It's about two musicians who tried, but failed to make it in the big city and how it destroyed their relationship.

Some of the humor is teddibly British, but the tune is catchy in an Irish pub band-ish sort of way. And the video is a nice bit of black-and-white pastiche ... mostly scenes of New York, incuding pipers in an NYPD band, and shots of MacGowan's and McColl's characters, both obviously drunk, shouting obscenities at each other. The BBC objected to this verse a duet in which McColl sings:

You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last.

Musically, it's not bad. The melody is sort of an Irish jig, and lines like "You scumbag, you maggot" go rolicking along in 6/8 time. The internal rhyme is appealing, too.

But, to make a long story short, BBC decided "faggot" would be offensive to listeners and took to playing an edited version.

Reaction was swift.

Interviewed on another BBC station, McColl's mother, Jean McColl, told another BBC show host she thought the decision to pull the original version was "pathetic ... absolute nonsense ... too ridiculous."

And a spokesman for the Pogues put it in perspective for The Guardian, a London broadsheet.

"This song now goes with Christmas like the Queen's speech and mince pies, and all of a sudden it's offensive," she told The Guardian. "It strikes me as very odd and I'm sure the band will be very amused."

The upshot: The BBC reversed its decision as soon as the story got out. But in the meantime, it was picked up worldwide. The BBC, which ordinarily argues against censorship, hurt its brand image. And, apparently nothurt a bit by all the publicity, the song stayed on at No. 1 on the Christmas charts.