Who Holds the Power?
Who controls our beliefs? We would like to believe that we are in control, that we make our own opinions on what is happing in the world. However, what we, as a society, often fail to realize is that often our opinions are based off what media we expose ourselves to and whether or not we choose to listen to it.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://cached.imagescaler.hbpl.co.uk/resize/scaleWidth/743/cached.offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/news/OMC/IPATouchpoints-2017091403302675.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ipa-touchpoints-uk-adults-media-consumption-9/1444664&h=496&w=743&tbnid=mkB_UGkRUHbddM:&q=media+consuming&tbnh=152&tbnw=228&usg=AI4_-kRkrh1qPaOKX2Pcx2P-BbMMP6B77g&vet=12ahUKEwifjPS97afgAhWQ3oMKHeOmC60Q9QEwAHoECAUQBg..i&docid=ws8mS2Z-JMGnOM&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifjPS97afgAhWQ3oMKHeOmC60Q9QEwAHoECAUQBg
Media today has consumed almost every aspect of our lives; whether it is from watching the news to simply checking their Instagram feed, everyone is always exposed to some form of news. This is not necessarily a bad thing – it is essential for people to stay informed about the world. However, this proves to be a potential new problem that the world has never faced: widespread disagreement of truth.
With widespread and various media coverage, events that have never before been covered are now in the forefront of the public’s attention. This is because the media has provided a way for the public to quickly view what is occurring in the world. However, the portrayal of an event in media may not be entirely truthful for everyone has their own definition of truth. Truth does not necessarily refer to what has actually occurred, but what should be done because of what certain events represent. “truth depends on early and thoroughly convincing establishment of a strange or fantastic environment, sense of another time, or unusual characters, so that we are caught up in the film’s overall spirit, mood, and atmosphere. If the filmmaker is skillful at creating this semblance of truth, we willingly agree to suspend our disbelief, and we leave our skepticism and our rational faculties behind as we enter the film’s imaginary world.”
https://www.speakertv.com/arts/arts-culture/culture-2/6-news-stories-from-2017-that-dont-involve-donald-trump/
News stories of murder and corruption, while however unfortunate, are becoming numb to the American public because of how often they appear in the news. Therefore, to combat this, news channels are making their stories more tantalizing and enchanting. Their stories have become more about their feeling about an event rather than objectifying the event that occurred. This suspension of the “truth” is a significant cause of the widespread division amongst the citizens of the United States. Each news station takes the actions in an almost extreme route to thereby maintain their viewer and ratings.
To maintain their status many news stations, take an extremely political viewpoint, for example, Fox News is uber conservative whereas a station like MSNBC takes a more liberal approach when reporting events. However, no matter which side of the aisle people support, both sources of media attempt to achieve their primary objective to tell people the news in an influential way and thereby have people return to their station to hear their next message.
Like every good story, their needs to be a villain. However, the depiction of this new-found villain is where the real problems arise and the conservative and liberal opinion clash. Take the debate over President Trump’s border wall. The Republican party argues that building a border wall will protect our country from foreign dangers. In contrast, the democrat party argues that the wall will symbolize that Americans do not want immigrants from Latin American countries, and it is America’s tradition to accept immigrants from all around the world for we are a country of immigrants.
However, because of the way that the media is covering this dilemma, there is no clash. One side is arguing over building a stronger border control whereas the other is arguing over a building something that stands against their American principles. Despite this fact, neither side is willing to discuss the same argument; it has become a passive-aggressive fight within our government to see whose opinion will be dominant. This fight for dominance will continue for the foreseeable future because of the media. Because the media has made issue such as President Trump’s border wall such a polarized issue, government officials are unlikely to be swayed from their side of the argument because of their constituents. Because of the way that these issues are now framed within the media, there is no room for common ground. Everything is a battle. Fox News has pulled over a majority of the conservatives, and a decent portion of the right-leaning moderates and MSNBC has done the same with the more liberal viewers. Both sides will look at any compromise as a “betrayal.” Now to avoid creating this image of “betrayal” government officials are now refusing to budge, despite the government shutdown. Whether this occurrence is due to their selective exposure or experiences, most constituents now predetermine their stance on almost any political issue. The media has lured the public in with their story and then traps them with their opinions – making them the real power behind the American government.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/8/16263710/fox-news-presidential-vote-study
https://www.lds.org/liahona/2016/09/young-adults/no-neutral-ground-how-media-influences-us?lang=eng
http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199793471.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199793471-e-009
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/media/the-power-of-media-media-essay.php
I agree that media plays a huge role in influencing our decisions and how we perceive the world. Social media’s role through social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter often get overlooked in their importance in the process in which media is consumed on a global scale. Social media applications such as these often produce what is known in pop culture as “fake news” as whoever breaks the news story first often gets the most credit for it. However, breaking the story first generally leaves less room for news sources to check the accuracy of their content. This leads people to believe in information that is not true and potentially act upon false claims. The way in which political figures such as President Donald Trump and Mike Pence are vilified in the media, in a way, supports the argument you are trying to make by comparing political figures to villains in Disney movies. I agree, in order to get ratings and boost a networks presence in the world of media they must deem someone a villain in order to monetarily succeed. This is a very useful tactic as it helps these news networks provide “juicy” content for their viewers. I still wonder if we will ever find a balance. Will news stations ever achieve some form of “homeostasis” amongst their viewers in order to give their audience the complete truth? I honestly don’t believe so. With the society we live in most networks, not including one’s that produce media content, use fallacies in order to also spread rhetoric and gain profit. Personally, I enjoy how you organized this blog as it seems very easy to follow and the content appears very clear. I believe your inclusion of a graph depicting which networks lean towards each direction of the political spectrum helps bring the argument you are making together. The structure of this blog is well done and I enjoy the way you were able to tie fantasy, which would be Disney movies, with the real world is very impressive. This blog was certainly fun to read and I can not wait to see more from you.
Source: https://miappi.com/reliability-of-social-media-news-source/
This article brings to light a major issue in the nation’s current discourse that isn’t acknowledged enough; the role the media plays in deepening the divides between both parties and solidifying people’s ideas rather than allowing for honest conversation.
There are various parts of the article that I agree with, and others I’m not 100% with you on. The first is when you talk about the media not covering murders in the country because we are numb to it. I don’t believe they don’t discuss it because we are numb. They ignore it because, at their core, news channels and the media, are businesses. They have to bring in revenue. Stories about gun violence that aren’t mass shooting where numerous people die aren’t profitable enough for the media. People won’t tune in, but what they do tune in to is the wall-to-wall coverage of the latest mass shooting.
This brings some unintended consequences along with it. The coverage of shooting like that cause a glorification of these shootings, and are breeding ground for “copycats” because they see the attention these issues get. A reporter at Vox, German Lopez, says that following these tragedies “It’s a moment to cover all the gun violence in domestic violence, or in minority communities that often go ignored”. The idea is obviously not responsible in this, but they play a major role in shaping discourse, and they have a responsibility to lead the conversation towards solutions rather than ratings-based coverage.
That leads to my second and final point, which you briefly talked about. The reality that the media is a for profit business, and they have loyal audiences they need to please in order to keep their ratings high and not lose income. This phenomenon leads to the often swayed or biased coverage you see on various stations. Fox, for example, has a very different audience than MSNBC or CNN, and thus they produce content that will please those people and solidify their beliefs and the beliefs of many of the people that work at Fox. The same goes for MSNBC, and various other channels. They have a priority to convey the news to the American public, but they also have to pay the bills, and that struggle is a massive problem in the media business today and our civic discourse as a country.
Colin McGee
https://journalistsresource.org/tip-sheets/writing/gun-violence-mass-shootings/
I would first like to say that I really appreciated your use of pictures and graphs and the like. I thought they really added to your blog post and made it visually interesting, and also enhanced my understanding of what you were discussing throughout the post.
As for the content of your post, I thought this was a really interesting and thought provoking blog post. It really got me wondering about bias in news media, and, upon doing a little bit of research, I came across an article on a website discussing a chart of a multitude of news sources and their scale of liberal leaning, neutrality, or conservative leaning as well as the overall quality of the news put out (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-biased-is-your-news-source-you-probably-wont-agree-with-this-chart-2018-02-28). According to this article the creator of the chart, Vanessa Otero, said that “in the past, national evening news programs, local evening news programs, and the front pages of print newspapers were dominated by fact reporting stories. . .now, however, many sources people consider to be ‘news sources’ are actually dominated by analysis and opinion pieces.” This is something that made me think; how much of “news” is riddled with opinions and feelings? News reporters are, after all, human, and as humans it would be very difficult to completely eliminate bias in their reports, so where is the line? Based on past experience with family members, I have gathered that, in the things that one might feel passionately about, facts can sometimes be ignored to further one’s personal feelings regarding a topic, but I don’t think that that’s acceptable for a news source. Sure, the reporters are human, but reports of news should be just that: reports. They should be summaries of the facts, not delivered with bias and withheld information, things not talked about and others enhanced to further an agenda.
I am glad that you pointed out this issue of so-called “fake news” or “alternative facts.” It is definitely an issue when trying to learn about or understand American politics. Our values, however, require us to have a free press and I feel that there are little to no solutions to our problem of these alternative facts. Any government intervention I feel is restricting the press. Personally, I prefer little to no government intervention in most things. Further, the graphs and pictures in your post I found very intriguing. It was really cool to see the percentage of left or right leaning news and ads per channel. A bit off topic, but I found it somewhat funny that the golf channel has nearly most of its ads as right leaning. As for the Disney picture, I really enjoyed. I have always followed the Disney political conspiracies as there are many. In all, I thought this was a great article that touched ona very important issue in American politics today.
Hudson, please remember that responses need to be 300-400 words with at least one source.