The News Media Being "objective" has been an unrealistic ethic that defines the news media. Fallows agues that journalism and the news has provided largely "entertainment fluff" and has virtually selected unthinking news communicated to the American people; and Paenti agrees and states that the Media is big business and therefore is not independent, objective, neutral, informative, balanced, and truthful. Their ideas may seem outlandish and farfetched, but it is the fact of life for the media today. The news media struggles to please every component of the business, from the advertisers to the owners. In turn, every word that is typed or spoken has one side of the story. The news shows that air on television today is nothing. but superficial programming to appease the public. Flip through the channels on a given day and a person will be bombarded with repetitive news "specials" or useless information. One has to ask oneself if there is not anything that is more worthy of this airtime. Parenti states that, "By focusing on "human-interest" trivia, on contest rather than content, the press makes it difficult for the public to give intelligent expression to the political life and to mobilize around issues (Parenti 17)". The news media would rather spend their time and money on issues that do not attack what the public really needs or wants to know. An example of how the media does not report on what the public wants to hear that Fallows brings to the surface is in the 1992 presidential campaign. The president took questions from teenagers that were mostly concerned with the relationship of the government and schools or community projects. The questions raised, ranged from laws that might be proposed for punishing peop... ... middle of paper ... ... direct censorship but from self-censorship, from journalists who design their stories so as to anticipate complaints form superiors (Perenti40)." I agree with every idea of Parenti and Fallows. All the points that they bring up The news media is nothing but a moneymaking business. Owners to reporters have underlining agendas to why they write and publish what they do. They fill airtime and newspapers with nothing, but one-sided, useless, information that we are to eat up. Society has to realize that most of the information that gets to us is watered down, and spiced up with a bit of an entertainment quality. Bibliography: 1. Fallows, James. (1997). Breaking The News: How The Media Undermine American Democracy: New York 2. Parenti, Michael. (1993). Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. New York: St. Martain Press Inc.
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.
In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air
The media have a great deal of power in the world today. As a result of this, media has grown into a business that shares anything they think will obtain them ratings and makes them money to keep the business
Fallows writes that this is an age of “truthiness.” The age of mass misinformation is upon us. I remember reading about the age of yellow journalism for a high school history class. We were assigned to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. We all know the story Sinclair tells. Like his book, the news of those times was written to support a certain viewpoint or perspective. I have often wondered where are the critics of today’s yellow journalism. How is Fox News that much different from the Hearst version of news in 1916? The difference is not apparent to me. However, Americans are less likely to care. We have much lower standards for everything. It is almost as though Vietnam and Nixon were the beginning of the end of American optimism and a sense of real decency. It is as though those two pivot...
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.
Coverage of events by the mainstream media is politically biased, due to the numerous instances when news networks support one party (either Liberal Democratic or Conservative Republican) and slant the issue in that party’s favor. For example, NBC News reported that the Affordable Care Act was “cheerleading” and viewed the law in a positive manner (Lawrence). As NBC is a major supporter of the Democratic Party, its views are obviously slanted towards liberal and supportive opinions of Obama and his policies. Moreover, this positive perspective of the law only attracts Democrats, and it masks the other perspective involving the detriments of that law, showing presence of propaganda, instilling liberal viewpoints in its unsuspecting audience. In contrast t...
Media professionals have a responsibility to report accurate and comprehensive information, not just what amuses audiences and garner ratings. In his legendary speech “Wires and Lights in a Box,” Edward R. Murrow discussed the power of media and the responsibility of journalist to accurately depict information. To continued reporting poorly constructed media presentations or messages that only serve as rating boosters will be the down fall of society, and history will be there to witness it. Media conglomerates have to power to revolutionize the kinds of information the audience receives. If two or three media outlets would make it a point to relese information that serves the greater good instead of cooperate sponsors bottom-line, the world
The state of the media is a matter of contention in today’s society. The conversation usually goes like this: is the media improving in an age where everyone is connected, has a voice, and carries a supercomputer in their pocket or is it becoming diluted and perverted to attract larger audiences. Do people still want to read a 2,000-word profile of Jeb Bush in The New Yorker, or would they prefer to view a Business Insider slideshow with pictures and bullets of the candidate to get the gist of his positions? This question leads to a bigger question: should the news be easy and entertaining or should it challenge and question its viewers and readers prevailing views? Films like “Network” and “Idiocracy” portray
The news media rejects the fact that they are biased. They claim that they are the “middle of the road,” and are neutral on the stories that they cover. Publishers also claim that they are the watchdog for the political system, and they make sure that the system is free of any corruption, or wrongdoing. Th...
... prejudice, bias, and in a general manner that imposes their views onto an audience. Yet, it is an entirely different story when stories are written in a specific manner for other reasons than to impose individual politics. The reasons mentioned throughout this paper are just some of the many ways in why a journalist might account for the story’s bias, and why news organizations thrive and depend upon such methods. Also, one of the most important key concepts to keep in mind when discussing bias in the media is that much has changed with new technologies. Just for example, budgets have been more restricting, consumer expectations have changed, and the audience expects stories to be shorter and more visual. With this being said, there are not always internal pressures, but there are physical and external restrictions and limitations that encourage bias as well.
The media is the main source for informing us about government, politics, worldwide events, etc. I am finding the differences and similarities of the articles from 3 dominant news sources – CNN, NBC, and Fox – to see how each of them framed the anniversary of Gettysburg Address in their articles. How these 3 dominant news channels frame their stories are how people are going to shape their opinion on the event. The textbook definition of framing is “the power of the media to influence how events and issues are interpreted” (Lowi 423). I think the media uses framing to make people think a certain way about a subject, person, event, etc. News sources are going to frame stories so they can influence their viewers to think and feel the way they do by choosing what news stories or events they want to cover. News sources can use framing to distract or inform us on important problems and think in a biased way (Lowi 423).
I recently read an article somewhere, in which BBC journalist Sigrun Rottman said that objectivity in journalism is an illusion and the media should think more of being balanced than being objective. According to her, objectivity in the media does not really exist. This hit home for me because before being a journalism student I believed that objectivity in journalism was undoubtedly the focal point of the profession and that the business of every journalist was to be objective. The truth and the reality of this belief as we know it and as I have come to understand is that objectivity in journalism really doesn’t exist or to put it in better terms, it doesn’t exist to the extent that we perceive it should. So, the oft-stated and exceedingly desired goal of modern journalism is objectivity - the ‘disconnected’ gathering and dissemination of news and information; this allows people to arrive at decisions about the world and events occurring in it without the journalist’s subjective views influencing the acceptance and/or rejection of the information. It’s a pity that such a goal is impossible to achieve! As long as humans gather and disseminate news and information, objectivity is an unrealizable dream.
In trying to attract new audiences, news media have begun to transition from reporting to becoming a form of entertainment. With the meteoric rise of social media’s role as a news source, the fight for an increase of diversity in the media, and the ever-growing desire of immediate content, the future of responsible journalism is more important than ever. Ask yourself, why do I think the way I do? Where do my political views originate? How do I prove them? Most likely, it is due to the biased portrayal of issues in the media and the politicization that accompanies what we consume. Now, compare your views to your preferred news reporting entity. More than likely, they are the same.
Newspapers and nightly news shows have become a business. They no longer go by the public services values they once stood by (Sensationalism, 2005). Instead of being the fourth branch of government, they are just like any other money making business. It is no longer a race to put out the truth; it is more a race for dollars and control. Sensationalism is purely fueled by money and popularity. If a news outlet garners a large amount of popularity, they can swing votes, and influence voters. Sensationalism has already affected many political situations. Sensationalism has proven to spread like a virus. If sensationalism is not controlled, there is no way the news outlets can be the advocate for the people.
Everyone watches the news but does that mean we have to trust them? The media is known for giving us verified information that is usually observed and /or proven. Most people get their information about current events from the news media because it would be impossible to gather all the news themselves. Television news is extremely important in the United States because more people get their news from television broadcasts than from any other source. Print media is the oldest form of media but is very significant. It is known for just reporting more than any other source of media. Radio news was the best ways to broadcast news before the television but, people still listen to the radio every day. “If errors regularly occur in a publication, its reputation suffers in threaten the very existence of publication,” said journalist Maximilian Schafer. Nobody wants to read false publication when they deserve the truth. There are several types of media but false news would still get out to the society by one of these Medias. There have situations where the news told the public false information and got away with it.