Throughout the years, the public has become dependent on the media to keep them up to date with current events worldwide and in their local communities. In fact, many people rely completely on the media, believing that the information that is provided is factual. However, the media has gradually slipped into a trap. The trap is the overuse and abuse of language and reasoning fallacies. Reasoning fallacies are exceedingly common in daily newspapers, television reports, presidential speeches and over the radio. Day after day, the public is subjected to reasoning fallacies and if these fallacies persist, the public will have a hard time deciphering what is true and what is false and what is fact and what is opinion. Three main fallacies, which are most common today, are generalizations, red herrings and appeals to popular passions. These fallacies are harmful to the public, because they obscure the truth and present them with inaccurate material.
If influential figures in society and the media continue to provide their audiences with information that is not completely accurate and information that hides the truth, it will be hard to differentiate between reality and someone’s personal view. An example of a particular fallacy that conceals the truth are generalizations. These fallacies assume what is true for the whole, is true for the part. In an article entitled “It’s all about revenge, not equality” by Lydia Lovric (Appendix 1), she generalizes feminists, saying that they are not interested in equality. She expresses that, “All they want is revenge.” However, this is not always true. Often feminists do indeed want equality for themselves, but just because they want equality does not mean any one else cannot have that same equality. In the article, Lydia changes a popular cliché to prove her point, “What’s good for the goose is not so good for the gander.” She believes that equal treatment only applies when it benefits women. In addition, Bill O’Reily’s article entitled “How did Buster get mixed up in this mess?” (Appendix 2) O’Reily hides the truth by utilizing generalizations. The article explains that children should not be subjected to watch a familiar cartoon character interact with the gay community. Buster is shown in the episode visiting Vermont and looking quite pleased when he is in a picture with a group of lesbians. O’Reily generalizes the children of today’s society declaring that, “Kids today are blasted out a G-rated life far too early”.
It is not uncommon to hear people complaining about what they hear on the news. Everyone knows it and the media themselves knows it as well. Some of the most renowned journalists have even covered the the media’s issues in detail. Biased news outlets have flooded everyday news. We find that journalism’s greatest problems lie in the media’s inability for unbiased reporting, the tendency to use the ignorance of their audience to create a story, and their struggles to maintain relevance.
It is very common among the United States’ political sphere to rely heavily on T.V. commercials during election season; this is after all the most effective way to spread a message to millions of voters in order to gain their support. The presidential election of 2008 was not the exception; candidates and interest groups spent 2.6 billion dollars on advertising that year from which 2 billion were used exclusively for broadcast television (Seelye 2008.) Although the effectiveness of these advertisements is relatively small compared to the money spent on them (Liasson 2012), it is important for American voters to think critically about the information and arguments presented by these ads. An analysis of the rhetoric in four of the political campaign commercials of the 2008 presidential election reveals the different informal fallacies utilized to gain support for one of the candidates or misguide the public about the opposing candidate.
398).It is also stated that news divisions reduced their costs, and raised the entertainment factor of the broadcasts put on air. (p. 400). Secondly, the media determines its sources for stories by putting the best journalists on the case and assign them to areas where news worthy stories just emanates. (p.400). Third, the media decides how to present the news by taking the most controversial or relevant events and compressing them into 30 second sound-bites. (p.402). finally, the authors also explain how the media affects the general public. The authors’ state “The effect of one news story on public opinion may be trivial but the cumulative effect of dozens of news stories may be important. This shows a direct correlation between public opinions and what the media may find “relevant”. (Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, 2015, p.
The discrepancies in media coverage in coverage of female and children athletics have large gaps, but are gaining momentum in sharing equality. Major athletic leagues such as the NBA and FIFA World Cup have wide gaps in marketing and ratings for their male and female athletes. Children are future athletes and superstars, but as funding and coverage in athletics catering to the males, women are breaking the barriers to be in the spotlight of sport. Both gender contribute equally to athletics, and challenge the each other to accept new ideas and change. The sports world that has a single gender dominating the media is unjust. Society does not want to bored, we need change in sports entertainment to cater to all. Not all parents and teachers are available to educate our children about the concepts of sharing and teamwork, our children are growing up learning key concepts through media. I will discuss these concepts and how they intertwine.
Discrepancy in Media Coverage Name:.. Course: Using the X College: Tutor: Date: Discrepancy in Media Coverage More boys than girls indulge in sports activities in school. This has become a huge source of concern. Male students take active part in sports activities. Girls on the other hand shun such activities.
Today it seems almost impossible to get a straightforward answer on any major topic from the media. All sources of media have a specific audience that they are intending to hear or view the information that they have prepared, therefore they will cut bits and pieces out so that only the message they are trying to get across will be received. So indeed there is a media bias, and yes it more often than not slants towards the liberal view point, as many reporters and journalists have liberal views themselves.
One of the major problems in the American media today is non-objective reporting which is also known as bias. This has been a trend since the early 1980?s and is very alarming for American citizens who watch the news for truth and honest reporting. Not only has bias been a problem in the broadcast media of ABC, NBC, and CBS, but it has also been a problem in mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times, The Sun, and The Boston Globe. For years, these media outlets have built their reputations on truth and now the trend is to lean left and not tell the whole story. Evidence of this has become very prominent in war coverage and election bias. Bias in the media is a big issue and causes lots of problems throughout the public such as losing trust in a once great source for news, people going elsewhere for information, being ill-informed, and leading to a low voter turnout.
My main criticisms of the news media today are that they do not show both sides of the story, they tend to cover items that should not be news. The things they do well is that they keep you informed on topic they deem fit, and of course the weather and traffic updates.
Fallacies are all around us. Every time we turn on a TV, or a radio, or pick up a newspaper, we see or hear fallacies. According to Dictionary.com, a fallacy is defined as a false notion, a statement or an argument based on a false or invalid inference, incorrectness of reasoning or belief; erroneousness, or the quality of being deceptive (www.Dictionary.com). Fallacies are part of everyday and become a staple in certain aspects of life. Political campaigns and reporters would be lost without the use of fallacies. Fallacies can be divided into two broad groups: fallacies of relevance and fallacies of insufficient evidence. Fallacies of relevance occur because the premises are logically irrelevant to the conclusion. Fallacies of insufficient evidence occur because the premises fail to provide sufficient evidence to support the conclusion, even though the premises may be logically relevant to the conclusion (Bassham, 2000). In this paper I will define three fallacies, explain their significance to Critical Thinking, and discuss their general application to Decision Making. The three fallacies I will discuss are Ad Hominem (attacking the person), Two Wrongs Make a Right, and Slippery Slope.
Media plays an important and powerful part in America. There are many different types of ways that the media can be biased. Below I will talk about different way the media is biased and explain how each of them can be possible. There are a lot of American that consult their television sets for the news daily. They come up with opinions on certain issues based on what they've saw, heard, and read in the media, such as the news on TV, radio, and newspapers they have read. The roles in the political affairs in the media are really vital: They have the advantage to make or break a person that is going for what they want to win. They can criticize a running applicant or make them popular. The news media networks affect the people watching the news
In the world today, logical fallacies pertain to an immense amount of current society issues. Whether it be personal attacks, racism, or peer pressure logical fallacies are noticeable in many of todays’ global issues.
From politics to weather, anyone who works for news media knows that they have to be unbiased on the information they report to millions of Americans. As citizens with little free time,we have no choice but to trust what information is given in newspapers, radios and televisions. However, only 4 out of every 10 Americans say they truly believe what their news channel televise, a historical low in America. News channels, especially in the big corporations, are being corrupted with prejudice information, imbalance of news coverage, and distorted stories.
We rely on the media for a lot of news and current events. Some news channels and reporter are consistently more reliable than others, and it is hard to determine which one is more credible than the other. All the news sources are so competitive they want to publish the story as soon as they get the information even if it is not accurate or complete. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe that the crime reported based on what is viewed on the news and the other seventeen percent is their lifestyle (Bohm, & Haley, 2012). These are the unbalanced reports from the media that we have to choose from when we want to know about the local and worldwide news. Sometimes the story is so repetitious that we get tired of seeing and hearing the same thing
The effective use of rhetoric can spur people into action for worthy causes, bring about positive health changes, and even persuade one to finish a college education. In contrast, like most things in life, what can be used for good can also be used in a negative way to elicit emotions such as outrage, fear, and panic. This type of rhetoric often uses fallacious statements in an appeal to emotion which complicates the matter even more as the emotions are misdirected. Unfortunately, the daily newspapers are filled with numerous examples of fallacious statements. Within the past week, the following five examples appeared in the New York Times and USA Today. The examples included statements that demonstrated scapegoating, slippery slope, ad hominem, straw man, line-drawing, arguments from outrage, and arguments from envy.
As Americans we take pride in our liberating government. But, it is essential to ask how much we, the general public, know about our democracy. Because of the representative structure of our government, it is in our best interest to remain as knowledgeable as possible about political affairs so that we can play an active role in our democracy by voting for candidates and issues. The media, which includes print, television, and the internet, is our primary link to political events and issues. (For the purposes of this essay only print and television will be considered.) Therefore, in order to assess the success of our democracy it is necessary to assess the soundness of our media. We are lucky enough to have a media, in theory, free from government influences because of our rights to freedom of press and freedom of speech, but we are still subject to the media’s interpretation and presentation of politics, as is the danger when depending on any source for information. So, we must address how the media informs us; how successful it is at doing so; and how we should respond to it.