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How society is influenced by media
How does media affect our culture and attitude
How does the media influence terrorism
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DO THE MEDIA ENCOURAGE TERRORISM
The news media of American society does not encourage terrorism. The only thing that the media encourages is knowledge of what is going on around the world. Unfortunately, some terrorist organizations use the news media to gain recognition for their groups causes and goals. Most of the time, the media will serve as force to gain citizen support for the government’s actions against a terrorist movement. The only problem with having the freedom of press that the United States enjoys is that everyone has a voice.
When it comes down to an American killing an American, the media is not allied with the terrorist. In many cases the television and newspaper crews serve to work directly against the militia organization. Americans do not like to see fellow citizens die at the hands of a terrorist, especially by an American terrorist. Timothy McVeigh, probably unknowingly, helped in decreasing the number of American terrorist (Grosscup, 117). McVeigh’s act, bombing the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, was seen as so repulsive that many law-abiding people attracted to militias simply walked away. The majority of Americans didn’t want to be associated with anything like the killing of 168 Americans, even though McVeigh had only attended a few militia meetings. The media coverage for the bombing in 1995 gave the American public the education needed to assess what was going on in the militant organizations across the United States.
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Bill Moyer’s PBS series, Buying The War, focuses on journalist’s impact and failure to go up against the Bush administration regarding the sought war in Iraq post 9/11. This documentary portrays how powerful the media was towards the nation, and how useless it was when challenging Bush and his team about whether America should go to war or not with Iraq. We can see how Bush and his administration persuaded the media enough, and to some extent controlled them, in order for them to communicate the message that going to war was the best choice. Patriotism played a vast role because reporters could not go against Bush and reject what he was saying or it would be considered “unpatriotic”. In addition to this, the bias in the media was also a major player that can be connected to patriotism. The media post 9/11 was
The media is the main source of information for America today. Tocqueville would call the media the "intellectual authority"(Tocqueville 13) in America. "Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry"(Tocqueville 11) These forms of media, newspapers, television and radio to name a few are filled with opinions and ideas that people just accept. Many of the leading media corporations are run by a handful of people. This means that the ideas and opinions that the masses are accepting are those ideas and opinions of a certain few people, a minority.
In today’s society the word “terrorism” has gone global. We see this term on television, in magazines and even from other people speaking of it. In their essay “Controlling Irrational Fears After 9/11”, published in 2002, Clark R. Chapman and Alan W. Harris argue that the reaction of the American officials, people and the media after the attacks of 9/11 was completely irrational due to the simple fact of fear. Chapman and Harris jump right into dismembering the irrational argument, often experienced with relationships and our personal analysis. They express how this argument came about from the terrorist being able to succeed in “achieving one major goal, which was spreading fear” among the American people (Chapman & Harris, para.1). The supporters of the irrational reaction argument state that because “Americans unwittingly cooperated with the terrorist in achieving the major goal”, the result was a widespread of disrupted lives of the Americans and if this reaction had been more rational then there would have been “less disruption in the lives of our citizens” (Chapman & Harris, para. 1).
The media’s influence over the masses of society is great. With every passing generation, the media’s ability to access and relay information to the general public with seemingly the greatest of ease continues to impress. Given the expanse of time that has passed since the 1990s, the media, even more-so to this day, shapes our lives, our perceptions, and influences our opinions greatly. The 1990s served an important decade in our country’s young history. Since the mid-1800s, and even before that time, our country has experienced its share of societal issues, from racism to sexism, to religious bigotry, and police brutality, to name a few. In 1994 a very high-profile case was introduced to the American public, as former NFL star Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson was charged in the double-homicide of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend and alleged lover, Ronald Goldman (Neuendorf, 2000).
June 17, 2015, was a tragic day for many families. Dylann Roof killed nine people at a church in Charleston South Carolina, he was motivated by racist opinions. During the reporting of this incident, each News outlet is different. Some outlets such as NBC and the New York Times took a more emotion-based route, focusing on family issues and his childhood. Whereas The Washington Post took a rational route to reporting the incident, focusing on Dylann’s Roof’s confession and the incidents following his arrest. Overall the media is spilt on their rhetoric, some want the readers to sympathize with Roof and others seek to paint him in a negative light. Nonetheless, they seem to agree on not calling him a terrorist. Roof’s actions can be labeled as
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
Timothy McVeigh was just another man until he changed the lives of many forever. “The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, was the most severe incident of terrorism ever experienced on American soil” (“Psychiatric” 755). This explosion created a widespread panic in Oklahoma and across the United States. Adults and children lost their lives due to an unethical act, and it did not go unnoticed. Parents had to bury their babies,
The media is often considered to be biased. The reason for this is because they do not act neutral on the things that they report on. They usually give their point of view and tend to warp the information so it’s easily digestible by the average person. This type of “nugget feeding,” can influence the judgment of some one who has no idea what is going on. The media tends to sensationalize the news by making it seem dramatic, and compelling. This hooks the viewer, and keeps them tuned in. The purpose of this is for ratings, and most importantly money. The media has become less professional, and their morality has gone down hill. The editors/gatekeepers decide what information is sent out for the public to see, and hear. This is another way that the news is shaped for our viewing pleasure.
Kamla Pande (2009) explored a number of attacks in this research study. However, Pande primarily focused on the attack of the city of Mumbai in India, in November of 2008 (p.5), and the attack on the United States in New York on September 11, 2001 (p. 7). The Mumbai attack occurred on November 26, 2008 and is described as a well-coordinated attack by armed attackers with the use of semi-automatic weapons, grenades and bombs. The attack lasted three days where the attackers opened fire on several businesses and a Jewish cultural center. Over 170 people were killed. In New York, on September 11, 2001, terrorists associated with al-Qaeda, hi-jacked four airplanes, two of which were flown into the World Trade Center. Over 3,000 people were killed during the attack. Pande, then, explored the prevailing research as to the types of media communication frames with regards to reporting terroristic attacks which included “international order” (describing terrorism as organized crime against a global society with a secondary emphasis on religion and politics) and “clash of civilizations” (describing terrorism in the context of hostility between different civilization)(p. 9).
Television, more so than any other form of communication, has been the ultimate tool of the propaganda effort. It is the trustworthiest medium to give us the subjective validity of our beliefs which can not be proven physically. It is the ultimate source from which we get evidence about objective reality, motivated by our desires to form an accurate view of this reality and to act correctly. United States is the biggest economical power in the world today, and consequently has the largest media and news industry. The gatekeepers of the American news industry control all the information, and decide what to publish or broadcast, based on the ideology and the structure of the institution. Therefore, whatever is presented in the news would probably be a part of the popular culture (created by the entertainment industry) or would serve it since the popular culture itself is created for the growth of the capitalist economy and the homogenization of the society, which are essential elements for a stable system. That is why the American media is terribly bias in many respects, especially in the matters of foreign affairs, driven by self b...
The militia exploded into prominence, however, in April 1995 when early reports indicated that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombing suspects, had belonged to a Michigan militia, or that militia groups were in some way directly connected to the bombing. As a result, nearly every newspaper and television stati...
The media takes a biased approach on the news that they cover, giving their audience an incomplete view of what had actually happened in a story. Most people believe that they are not “being propagandized or being in some way manipulated” into thinking a certain way or hearing certain “truths” told by their favorite media outlets (Greenwald 827). In reality, everyone is susceptible to suggestion as emphasized in the article “Limiting Democracy: The American Media’s World View, and Ours.” The
In fairy tales, children are pushed into ovens, have their hands chopped off, are forced to sleep in coal bins, and must contend with wolves who've eaten their grandmother. In myths, rape, incest, all manner of gruesome bloodshed, child abandonment, and total debauchery are standard fare. We see more of the same in Bible stories, accentuated with dire predictions of terrors and abominations in an end of the world apocalypse that is more horrifying than the human imagination can even grasp.
Over the past twenty years, there have been at least three major school shootings that hit the media. The most recent school shooting that caught the media’s attention was located in Newtown, Connecticut. A young man by the name of Adam Lanza, walked into Sandy Hook elementary and walked through the hallways and classrooms with an AR-15 and multiple glocks to massacring innocent young, children and teachers. Before showing up to the school, he walked into his mother’s room and shot her in the head four times. Lanza killed twenty children and also killed six teachers. After killing the most people, he thought that he could, he took a fatal shot to the head that he caused by himself. The second most recent school shooting that was all over the media was in April of 2007. This shooting took place at Virginia technical institute. A senior, Seung-Hui Cho, walked onto campus with sinister intentions. His target wasn’t a single person or a single group, it was everyone in his sight. Cho killed thirty-two people and seventeen others. Five of those victims were professors while the other twenty-seven were students. After killing these hardworking civilians, Cho committed suicide. This was the deadliest attack in the United states by a single gunman. The biggest school shooting to hit the media was the Columbine High school Massacre. Unlike the last two school shootings, there were two shooters by the names of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Two high school Seniors. They walked into the high school, located in Columbine, Colorado, and opened fire at everyone in their way. They ended up killing twelve students and one teacher along with injuring twenty-one additional people. When this hit the news, it was devastating and unheard of. No one has seen such a terrible act like this before. All these terrible crimes have to do with gun control and the problems with it in our
Media is used by dominant powers to spread their ideological beliefs and to help maintain social control. Althusser (1971) explains that, as an ideological state apparatus, media doesn’t use pressure as a way to bind society together under one dominant ideology, but instead uses the will of the people to make them accept the dominant ideology. However, media is also used as a way for people to challenge the dominant ideology. Newspapers, for example, will have articles that openly criticise and oppose the dominant ideology for what it is, whilst at the same time providing perspectives and opinions on different ideologies (such as feminism) that society can believe in. Although these alternate ideological perspectives exist, they are usually overlooked and only ever reach small audiences. Ideology can also help us understand the media because of the way in which it distributes ideology. A lot of different types of media, such as film and TV; reflect different ideologies, though we are not always aware that they are doing so. An example of this would be action/adventure films, which shows that using force or violence to solve problems is acceptable and reflects upon certain ideologies. This helps us to understand the media because the ideology that is reflected in these films is capable of reaching big audiences through the use of TV and film, thus allowing for it to become a more common belief within