On February 26, 2012, an apparently innocent teenager was shot as he walked home through his neighborhood late at night. The Trayvon Martin killing and trial has recently been one of the primary topics covered by the media in America. The response to the news coverage of the case has been staggering. Students have organized hoodie marches and created Facebook groups to protest the unjustified murder of the young man. However, is the American public as well informed as it pretends to be? Americans have an unsettling susceptibility to manipulation from the media. In 1991, a similar event occurred in the case of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, where Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, had his personal affairs put on display for America. This event ignited unrest in women’s rights and civil rights groups across the country. Americans were surprised to discover that the nation had been blind to these supposed political injustices for years. The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings cloaked a staggering message to the American people about media’s role in manipulating American sentiment by sensationalizing the news coverage relayed to the American public.
The original purpose of the Clarence Thomas hearings were to determine if George Bush’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, was a legitimate nominee for the prestigious role of Supreme Court justice. However, the hearings quickly developed into little more than a “political spectacle.” A political spectacle “is public in the sense that it deals with a… scandalous action that carries instant and wide appeal no matter who does it” . The spectacle was tailored so that it would reach and catch the attention of millions of viewers. In order to accomplish th...
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...ide, “Deconstructing the Political Spectacle: Sex, Race, and Subjectivity in Public Response to the Clarence Thomas/ Anita Hill “Sexual Harassment” Hearings,” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1993): 701.
Dianne Rucinski, “Rush to Judgment? Fast Reaction Polls in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Controversy,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 57 (1993): 575.
Frances Trix and Andrea Sankar, “Women's Voices and Experiences of the Hill-Thomas Hearings,” American Anthropologist 100 (1998): 32.
Larry Hugick, "On Night before Vote, Support for Thomas Remains Strong," Gallup Poll News Service 56 ( 1991): 2.
Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 99.
Thomas P. Kim, “Clarence Thomas and the Politicization of Candidate Gender in the 1992 Senate Elections,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 23 (1998): 399.
Scott, Wilbur J. “The Equal Rights Amendment as Status Politics.” Social Forces 64, no. 2 (1985): 499-506, accessed February 12, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2578653.
Gevinson, A. (2009, July 28). Supreme Court Nominations | Teachinghistory.org. Retrieved February 19, 2014, from http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/22435
Palmer, Elizabeth A. "The Court and Public Opinion." CQ Weekly 2 Dec. 2000. CQ Weekly. SAGE Publications. Web. 1 Mar. 2000. .
In Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Juan Williams, a well-known political analysis on Fox News Channel, tells us the story of the influential American lawyer Thurgood Marshall. Williams shares with us the life events of Thurgood Marshall, along with stories and long kept secrets that are revealed to him during interviews with the experienced lawyer and his closest colleagues. Chronologically, Williams walks us through the experiences of Marshall beginning with his childhood background and schooling, then to his revolutionary career within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and the Supreme Court, and concludes with Thurgood Marshall’s legacy and impact on the Civil Rights Movement.
Network news appears to convey more stereotyped impressions, a narrower range of positive roles for blacks than for whites. Representations of whites in network news are more varied and more positive than of blacks, not because of conscious bias, but because of the way conventional journalistic norms and practices interact with political and social reality. The findings raise questions about the journalist ability to represent the reality of black America while adhering to the professional practices that currently shape network news. Mainstream news portrayed African American as criminals, homeless beggars, welfare queens, ghetto-dwelling gang members, or drug addicts in American Society. Perpetuation of young black men as dangerous has been planted in the mind of American society not only by words and images projected by journalists but also in the mainstream news especially. Television particularly the news has the least positive representation of African Americans especially young males. When television became a house-hold item in the early 1950, this was a dark time in American History because there were huge racial tensions brewing in the south. The news show African American mostly young males getting abuse, hosed by police and attack by police dogs during a peaceful protest. It gives the negative images that African American was unlawful people and need to be dealt with swift action. Most of the time African Americans weren’t resisting but the news media depicted the images that they were and police were just doing their job to keep the peace.
During Indiana's 2008 General Election." Journal Of Law & Politics 25.3 (2009): 329-373. ContentSelect Research Navigator. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
Technology is growing fast, as is the new generations branching off with new forms of media and devices that provide us with the news. News and politics have had difficulty when informing its public and community of the events that happen in their community. Now the media and news are growing to reform to the earlier generation’s way of receiving the news and events related to them, by using media and popular culture. According to Wodak, for politics to air and to engage and intrigue its public, it must need scandal, rumour, and speculation (45). The West Wing, is a clear example of where the news and politics enter into the world of entertainment, but still informing its audience of the political world and events they may face. I will be analyzing The West Wing television series in relation to the representations of gender, race, and politics with support from examples and scholarly sources.
Owen, D. (2000). Popular politics and the clinton/lewinsky affair: The implications for leadership. Political Psychology, 21(01), 161-177. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3792069
Dye, Thomas R. , L. Tucker Gibson Jr., and Clay Robinson. Politics In America. Brief Texas Edition ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2005.
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. African Americans are fortunate to have leaders who have fought for a difference in Black America. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are two powerful men in particular who brought hope to blacks in the United States. Both preached the same message about Blacks having power and strength in the midst of all the hatred that surrounded them. Even though they shared the same dream of equality for their people, the tactics they implied to make these dreams a reality were very different. The background, environment and philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were largely responsible for the distinctly varying responses to American racism.
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
Through manipulation and lies, media manages to modify objective news into biased news in order to convince the public of what the media wants them to believe. The article, “How the Media Twist the News”, by Sheila Gribben Liaugminas discusses the major influence that news has on readers based on their choice of stories and words. “How the Media Twists the News” has borrowed from multiple other texts such as the books like Public Opinion and Liberty and News, news magazine writers such as Ruderman, and news networks like CBS through Bias, A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and CNN to make her arguments valid and prove that the news is biased and that it does influence readers significantly because of it.
Kim E Nielsen. "Book Review of Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith, and: No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and: Barbara Jordan: American Hero." Feminist Formations, Fall 2001, 205.
pp. pp. pp Kay, H. H. (2004, Jan). Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Professor of Law.
Rather than being a neutral conduit for the communication of information, the U.S. media plays an intricate role in shaping and controlling political opinions. Media is extremely powerful in the sense that without an adequate functioning media, it is virtually impossible for a sophisticated social structure like the U.S. Government to exist. Henceforth, all known sophisticated social structure, have always dependent upon the media’s ability to socialize. The U.S. government generally will exploit the media, often times manipulating the enormous power of the printed word. Ultimately empowering the U.S. government, strengthening it with the ability to determine and control the popular perception of reality. One way in which government achieves this objective, is by its ability to misuse the media’s ability to set the agenda. Contrary to popular belief, media is in fact an enormous hegemony. In fact, separate independent news organizations relatively do not exist. Rather than creating an independent structured agenda of there own, generally lesser smaller news organizations adapt to a prepared agenda, previously constructed by a higher medium. Based upon this information alone, it is quite apparent that media functions in adherence to the characteristics of a hierarchy. This simply means that media is structured in a way that it operates functioning from top to bottom. This is also identical to the hierarchical nature of the human body, in that from the commands of the brain transferred through the central nervous system, the body responds accordingly. In order for the U.S. government to control and determine the public’s popular perception of reality, the government must shape and oversee the information that the media reports to the existing populous. This particular process of democracy is known and referred to by political scientists as cognitive socialization. However, many of us, who do not adhere to the cushioning of political correctness, refer to it as the propaganda machine. Numerous political scientists consider cognitive socialization to be the most effective form of political socialization. According to theory, cognitive socialization is doctored up information, which is strategically fragmented in such a manipulative manner, that the probability of its rationalization is highly predictable. The manipulative properties of cognitive socialization are so diabolical and Machiavellian in nature, that I consider it to be the ultimate perversion of the democratic process. In all seriousness, numerous intellectuals, and gentleman held in good stature agree, that cognitive socialization is the product of an evil genius.