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How Media Influence On Public Opinion
Media influence on public opinion
Influence of media informing public opinion
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I’m a frequent traveler. When doing regular traveling one gets to compare and contrast different cultures on regular basis. Most of these comparisons include foods, clothes or simple social attributes. Lately however I have to come to realize a sharp and quite disturbing difference in US media. Whenever I have the chance to compare news coverage in the middle-east I find myself confused and parted. I often find American news coverage, TV and newspapers alike, being bias, especially those covering problems in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. It seems as if I am watching two different wars. In America I am watching a stronghold power, Israel, fighting the endless terrorism brought by Palestinians. In Europe I see a war between two nations in despair thoroughly trying to fight terror from both sides of the conflict. I consistently find myself questioning American newspapers, as they use overly strong terminology and definitions on top of puzzling omission of essential facts. This paper was made to research and analyze the cause of my questioning while comparing these causes to Europe in order to see if my questioning is justified. I found that because of small groups with pro-Israeli interests dictating this country, U.S government has a need to manipulate and slant media in order to get accord for their action. The questionable U.S actions include extremely imbalanced aid to the Middle/East conflict, favoring Israel. However, before I could draw any conclusion of a U.S bias I had to analyze whether my accusations for U.S media bias was justified. The manipulation becomes quite evident if one analyzes seven common violations of objective journalism: selective omission, misleading definitions and terminology, imbalanced reporting, opin...
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...ffairs. 2004.
<http://www.washington-report.org/us_aid_to_israel/index.htm>
“U.S. Aid to Israel Subsidizes a Potent Weapons Exporter.” Jim Krane. 2002.
Associated Press. 20 June, 2002.
<http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/p-krane.html>
“The Launching of New International Campain…” Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi. 2004.
EU Social Forum. 20 Oct. 2004.
<http://www.palestinagrupperna.a.se/sanktioner041020.pdf>
“The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush’s War”. Michael Lind. 2003
New Statesman. 7 April. 2003.
<http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-lind.html>
”A Costly Friendship”. Patrick Seale. 2003
The Nation. 21 July, 2003.
<http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-seale.html>
“Pressure on Campus”. Paul Findley. 2004.
They Dare to Speak Up. 2004.
< http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-campus.html>
In the second stage, the cave dweller can now see the objects that previously only appeared to him as shadows. “Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer th...
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The Allegory of the Cave is a parable that demonstrates how humans are afraid of change and what they do not know. In this work, Plato suggests a situation in which men are living in an underground cave. The one entrance is located near the top and there, a burning fire casts shadow. The men of the cave are chained so that they can only see the wall and cannot turn around. When objects pass by it creates a shadow on the wall. The shadows are the only thing they can see and therefore is the only thing they know to exist (747). Somehow one of them gets loose and wanders outside the cave (748). When he gets out, he is astonished at what he finds. He comes back in to tell the others about what he saw. The other men think he is mad and plot to kill him (749). This illustrates how fear, inherent in the primitive nature of man, only serves to promote his ignorance.
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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.
As people, we tend to believe everything we see. Do we ever take the time to stop and think about what is around us? Is it reality, or are we being deceived? Reality is not necessarily what is in front of us, or what is presented to us. The environment that we are placed or brought up has a great impact on what we perceive to be the truth or perceive to be reality. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most significant attempts to explain the nature of reality. The cave represents the prisoners, also known as the people. They are trapped inside of a cave. They are presented with shadows of figures, and they perceive that to be reality. The cave can be used as a
Representing knowledge, the light is too brilliant for him to see and comprhend. He must be re-educated. "First he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of the men and other objects? then the objects themselves" (Jacobus 317). He learns that the reflections are truer than shadows and the objects truer than reflections. He must deal with a new reality that does not exist within the cave.
The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. He sees it as what happens when someone is educated to the level of philosopher. He contends that they must "go back into the cave" or return to the everyday world of politics, greed and power struggles. The Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. The fun of the allegory is to try to put all the details of the cave into your interpretation. In other words, what are the models the guards carry? the fire? the struggle out of the cave? the sunlight? the shadows on the cave wall? Socrates, in Book VII of The Republic, just after the allegory told us that the cave was our world and the fire was our sun. He said the path of the prisoner was our soul's ascent to knowledge or enlightenment. He equated our world of sight with the intellect's world of opinion. Both were at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge. Our world of sight allows us to "see" things that are not real, such as parallel lines and perfect circles. He calls this higher understanding the world "abstract Reality" or the Intelligeble world. He equates this abstract reality with the knowledge that comes from reasoning and finally understanding. On the physical side, our world of sight, the stages of growth are first recognition of images (the shadows on the cave wall) then the recognition of objects (the models the guards carry) To understand abstract reality requires the understanding of mathematics and finally the forms or the Ideals of all things (the world outside the cave). But our understanding of the physical world is mirrored in our minds by our ways of thinking. First comes imagination (Socrates thought little of creativity), then our unfounded but real beliefs. Opinion gives way to knowledge through reasoning (learned though mathematics). Finally, the realization of the forms is mirrored by the level of Understanding in the Ways of Thinking. The key to the struggle for knowledge is the reasoning skills acquired through mathematics as they are applied to understanding ourselves. The shadows on the cave wall change continually and are of little worth, but the reality out side the cave never changes and that makes it important.
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