In recent discussions of vagueness in news media coverage of tragic events, many issues have arisen concerning vague and manipulated information to audiences. Before understanding how vagueness may affect an audience, it is first necessary to understand what constitutes as vague communication. Vague and ambiguous language can be characterized as a discourse that does not clearly state or show what one may express, and may often leave room for interpretation from the audience. The past century in modern English writing has been abounding with issues of ambiguity in all areas of discourse, but most recently in the mass media. As technology advances at an alarming rate, there are many new ways and sources to receive news media. However, the most …show more content…
This is clearly shown when Lombrozo describes the incident where Dick Cheney had accidentally fired a round, hitting a man named Harry (Lombrozo). As Lombrozo had quoted, Cheney manipulated the discourse from him accidentally shooting another man, to displacing the action onto the gun being the culprit. With this, Cheney is able to gain public opinion and discern the idea that the crime was his fault. In view of this, one may now understand how events can be misconstrued with vague language usage to implicate the opposite to an event. Lombrozo asserts this information clearly is manipulated with the sole purpose to mislead the audience, shifting the blame from an individual or idea to …show more content…
Jaclyn V Schildkraut, in her " Mass Murder and the Mass Media: An Examination of the Media Discourse on U.S. Rampage Shootings, 2000-2012," discusses the implications of vague and ambiguous language when discussing mass shootings. As previously mentioned, vague language may often inevitably leave room for interpretation by the observer, but Schildkraut discusses the direct implications of such events on viewers. More specifically, many news reporters will dilute the information down to its bare skeleton and avoid pertinent information in objective reporting as well as manipulating statistics to further create an alarming hysteria to its audience. In response to these findings, Schildkraut asserts:
Personal opinions may override objectivity and facts, and O’Toole (2000) notes that news reports may provide information that is “not necessarily complete, balanced, or accurate” (p. 3). For example, though Adam Lanza was eventually named the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School, initial reports claimed that his brother Ryan was the shooter and even circulated his Facebook photo … on Facebook nearly 10,000 times.
Consequently, “In recent years, tragedies involving mass killings in the US, such as The Aurora, CO movie theatre shooting in July 2012, and the Newton, CT has intensified social focus on trying to understand the dynamics and contributing factors that underlie such events”(Towers 2). Both of these shooting left the public shocked and concerned. As an article says one of the main concerns was “concern with the publics understanding of the shooting specifically who or what did the public blame” (Joslyn, and Do...
In the cases of school shootings that took place at Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary, Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University, the media highly publicized the fact that the perpetrators were avid video gamers, but why is this important? The media want’s your attention and they are more than willing to say almost anything to get it. They reported that the perpetrators were avid gamers with the implication that there is a well establish connection between the two when there is not. They exploit the fear of parents and concerned citizens by not including relevant corresponding information in order to leave you more interested lea...
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
For many, it is commonplace to criticize media’s methodology in one way or another. In fact, it may be necessary to keep major news companies honest and partial about the information they provide to millions. This is especially so in a climate where, for example, a police and civilian shooting may incite riots and outrage across large cities. Should incorrect information be published, there may be substantial consequences in response to something false. Rebecca Solnit argues in her piece, When Media Is the Disaster, that the media’s tendency to treat property as more valuable than human life depicts victims of natural disasters as criminals, rather than survivors.
Rumor says that Katelyn jenner died by assassination. That is an example of how news reporters get your attention. They do this because they want you to think that so it grabs your attention. All they want you to think is that he/she died which is a devastation but, he really didn’t. All these false reports you see on the cover of magazines aren't always accurate. It is important to grasp your attention because if they don’t they won’t get money. They won't get money because you pay for your newspaper and, if no one buys it the one who wrote it is broke. So basicly what i am trying to say is news reporters makeup slight lies to grab your attention. So they aren’t always reliable.
The orlando shooting is an important recent event in the media. This essay will discus the extent and length of the way that the media has covered the event. The extent and length will be analysed in a discussion on how news values and political considerations impact the coverage. The effects of the way that the media has covered the event will be addressed and evaluated.
Watching the regular news as I frequently do, I always hear the way a reporter speaks about a topic and immediately I know the view that that particular reporter takes. This happens in many instances, but one time in particular caught my attention. A reporter was doing a story on vandalism. Usually you hear about vandalism on abortion clinics and harassment of that sort, and usually the reporter uses the words “Anti-abortionists” to describe the people who commit these crimes. One the other hand this time was different. The reporter was doing a story on vandalism that happened on a church billboard, outside the church, and the billboard said something having to do with pro-life and the choice that they believed in. Later that night there was a huge black question mark that was spray painted on that saying. The reporter desc...
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
In Radford's essay, he describes “the media paradox” which is forged when “we misplace our fears due to our reliance on the mainstream media” (235). Radford describes how the vast majority of mainstream news is “market-driven” and often relies on sensationalized stories that the media projects as important. Radford points out that there’s a media bias that focuses on murder and violence, which leads the public to believe that the world is much more dangerous than it really is. Radford argues that homogenization of the news, in particular, can be especially damaging to our society, and he believes that the method of targeting singular demographics insults the intelligence of the
“Political Language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” So states George Orwell; an English novelist famous for his essays and numerous novels such as 1984. Though his essay Language and Politics was written as far back as the mid 1940s, his ideals and perspectives on political language still ring true in many of today’s current events. He discusses the vagueness that political writers use in order to sound better to their audience, as well as basic rules to follow when writing to prevent repetition. Then there’s also Daniel J. Boorstin; an American historian at the University of Chicago, who wrote the essay Pseudo-Events that stressed arranged news articles to gain publicity in certain areas of media. He discussed
This belief is also demonstrated in the article “Challenging ‘He Said, She Said’ Journalism,” in which Linda Greenhouse contests the objectivity in the media claiming that “the ‘he said, she said’ format...impedes rather than enhances the goal of informing the reader” and leads to the twisting of words, altering the meaning of what is communicated (Greenhouse 21). Stefan Halper also argued on this topic in his article “Big Ideas, Big Problems” by commenting on how the truth is often overshadowed by flashy slogans and “Big Ideas” which the public is more likely to listen and respond to as opposed to a less extravagant news story filled with details the public should know but may not want to hear. Halper asserts that the media
News media outlets do not shy away from media framing. Media framing is how information is presented to the public, whether it is leaving information out or exaggerating the details. Erving Goffman was the first to bring forth the idea and theory of framing and defined framing as a “schemata of interpretation” that enables individuals to “locate, perceive, identify and label” occurrences or life experiences (Goffman, 1974). In his 1993 discussion of framing, Robert Entman offered a more thorough explanation: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.” (Entman, p.52). Entman used the term “salient” when referring to framing. Salient terms are more noticeable and important. As he described it, “Texts can make bits of information more salient by placement or repetition, or by associating them with culturally familiar symbols” (Entman, p.53) Entman further explains that frames are a particular way in which the human consciousness can
Introduction The news is fascinating to me because, in my opinion, it is an integral yet under-appreciated part of daily life. Due to technological advances, it is now possible for people around the world to access information on the world’s current affairs at almost any time and place. We constantly take in this information whilst giving little to no thought about the process behind it. Some scholars have referred to the news as the 'language of mass communication', speech that is designed to be heard not only by a select few people, but by an unknown number of viewers.