"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands." –Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891. The quote above sums up the past and present influence of the media on human societies. Humans have a tendency to look for the justifications for their ridiculous actions whether for the benefit of a group, the spread of their ideology, or sheer greed. In creating these justifications, some form of media must be used in order for it to take hold of a given society. The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, acting as a preamble, led from one event to another such as the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. The latter conflict was the epitome of deplorable misery and death all fuelled by what was spread in printed manuscripts and books. My argument is that various media, particularly the newspaper, have led and will continue to lead political strife and misery. In addition, I will be arguing with evidence from the nineteenth century, such as a brief description of the rise of the media in 1860s United States, the Congo experience of Henry Morgan Stanley, and culminating with the beginning of the Spanish-American War at the end of that century. While the media did not have any spectacular influences apart from the Reformation, American and French Revolutions (particularly in the form of pamphlets to spread ideals), it was galvanized in the nineteenth century by improvements in technology. These improvements, which were brought about by the Industrial Revolution, harnessed the capacity of the printing presses to multiply their output geometrically. With ... ... middle of paper ... ...ions, due to improvements in technology, spread them everywhere with no consideration for consequences. This media, exploiting human appetites for new information and venturing into uncharted territory, unintentionally created a new world where lives were drastically changed forever. Works Cited Berenson, Edward. Heroes of Empire: Five Charismatic Men and the Conquest of Africa. Berkeley: University of California, 2011. Print. Key, Wilson Bryan. The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Confidence, The Sin in Sincere. New York: H. Holt, 1989. Print. Secunda, Eugene, and Terence P. Moran. Selling War To America: From the Spanish American War to the Global War on Terror. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007. Print. Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994. Print.
When discussing the media, we must search back to its primal state the News Paper. For it was the News paper and its writers that forged ahead and allowed freedoms for today’s journalism on all fronts, from the Twitter accounts to the daily gazettes all must mark a single event in the evolution of media in respects to politics and all things shaping. Moving on in media history, we began to see a rapid expansion around 1990. With more than 50% of all American homes having cable TV access, newspapers in every city and town with major newspaper centers reaching far more than ever before. Then the introduction of the Internet; nothing would ever be the same.
There are many ways the media influences society, but in the 1920’s the main source was newspapers. The New York Times was one of the most popular and prestigious papers of this time and also one of the most influential. Many people had fait in what they read and never second gu...
. Pilisuk, Marc. “[CN]Chapter 5: [CN] Networks of Power.” Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System. With Jennifer Achord Rountree. Westport: Praeger Security International, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2008. Print.
James Curran (Curran, 2003) Claims the reign of the press barons didn’t introduce anything that hadn’t already been incited, despite being said to be innovators; they didn’t break with tradition by infusing political propaganda into their publications but instead demoted propaganda for entertainment and detached the commercial press from political parties. The Large empires created by the press barons emerged due to three trends. Chain ownership, expanding locally and regionally meant multiple papers and proved profitable. Expanding markets, by removing tax laws and market domination.
Today’s mass media has been molded by hundreds of years of reporting, journalism, and personal opinions. America’s mainstream media thrives upon stretching the truth and ‘creating’ interesting stories for the public. Tactics like this can be credited to people such as William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul from the late 19th to the 20th centuries. Hearst greatly influenced the practice of American journalism through his wealth, short political career, and use of unorthodox reporting methods such as yellow journalism.
"Journalism : Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. .
Carr, Matthew.” Chapter 12: A Raid on the Path: 9/11 and the War on Terror.” Unknown Soldiers. 291-321.UK: Profile Books, 2006. History Reference Center. Web.25 Feb, 2014
Irving, Washington. “The Devil and Tom Walker”. Elements of Literature: Fifth Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2008. 175-185. Print.
Newspapers, and magazines both helped people stay and touch, and know what’s going on around them. The shift from print-based journalism to electronic media began in the 1920s. Competition between newspapers and radio was minimal, because the latter was not yet an effective news medium ("History of American Journalism”). A lot of the newspapers gave foreign and domestic news weekly. They gave more diversity by featuring poetry and religious sections, since most writers had those views. There was a new way of presenting newspapers during this era, and that was the tabloid format. Tabloids were half the size of a regular newspaper, and they were soon to be known as magazines. Some of the popular magazines were Reader's Digest, Time, Vanity Fair, and even Vogue. Magazines like Time were informational magazines with detailed current events, while magazines like Vogue set fashion trends ("Mass Media”). These forms of media were essential to the nation being open to new ideas, and knowledgeable to everything that was
Hellmann, John. Fables of Fact: the New Journalism as New Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1981. Print.
From 1890s to 1945, media played an important role to spread news and change Americans’ opinions about different events. I believe that media changed Americans ideas by exaggerating the truth, propaganda and providing information. There are some examples about how media controlled Americans’ thoughts.
Throughout the years, mass media has profoundly affected American culture, on its way of life and on the individuals exposed to the media. It is the primary means of communication that is utilized to achieve the vast majority of the general public. “Media often hypes the basic facts or information and presents them so as to increase the superficial appeal of things.” (Mondal) Alongside mass media, tourism and the commercialization of cultural events also have a big influence on regional cultures. Nonstop exposure to the media has affected various people, in which the majority of them are uninformed of the real facts and fail to realize that the information being presented to them is not completely true. (Quail) Due to that, tourists see regional
Media, in its largest sense, hypothetically is one small page in the large "book of life". However, nineteenth century society has based an entire chapter of their lives on what happens in every medium used for communication. Through the creation of radio and of television in the late 1940's, and the modernization of newspapers and magazines, specifically, American culture has devoted themselves to a mass communications lifestyle in which they base most of their well being upon.
John Lennon once said, "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there 'd be peace." In other words, he believed that the media was something that corrupted society and debased its morals. Media has always been around us; whether it is a persuasive billboard or a television commercial. It is inevitably everywhere bombarding society with violence. Today people are accustomed to this type of media, but one cannot neglect the correlations between some past incidents and media violence. Media coverage of violence is harmful to society since it has been associated with glamorizing crimes, causing children to behave aggressively, and creating motivation for criminals. Diminishing changes such as censoring the media and creating
One of the first connections Wattenberg makes is raising the issue of whether or not newspapers are a dying habit when looking, not only at the adolescents of America, but as the country as a whole. Overall, he states that the number of people who consistently read a newspaper on a daily basis has remained on a steady decline as the years go by. Wattenberg brings up the topic that earlier on in history the newspaper was the means of information for people all across America, and it was filled with political news to keep the citizens informed. However, in today 's society not only has technology taken over this old time habit, the new