Week 11 – Ben Hayes (bch5100)

Michael Parenti’s article initially focuses on objectivity in journalism and then shifts to government manipulation in the latter half.  Parenti questions the merit of striving for “objectivity” in journalism as he believes it neutralizes reporters’ critical thinking and questioning.  He goes further by referencing David Halberstam who questions the objectivity of editorial decisions when choosing which stories to pursue and publicize.  Through this subjective process, certain story angles or entire stories may be disregarded in favor of others.  Additionally, Parenti relies on Britt Hume who suggests that journalists should strive for honesty as opposed to strict objectivity.

Following the discussion of objectivity, Parenti changes the subject to government manipulation.  He describes the relationship between media and government, or more specifically, journalists and politicians.  This relationship is strengthened, and partially perpetuated, by the two-way door of employment that has emerged.  Media professionals can seek positions within the government and politicians can work with or for media companies.  Additionally this relationship rewards journalists, who remain loyal to the government administration, with “news nuggets”.  Being disloyal can result in criticism, restricted access to government press conferences or representatives, and less legal leniency.

Taken together, Parenti seems to argue that reporters, journalists, and editors cannot be objective and often choose not to be objective.  This lack of objectivity is coerced through corporate and political interests. In his conclusion, Parenti mentions that the news manufacturing process has government and economic influences which – in order to advance these interests – maintain ideological monopoly and control flow of information.  Because of these influences, more appropriately, incentives, the media will rarely criticize the government or multinational corporations.

The issues raised by Parenti in his article challenge the notion of a “free press” in the United States.  A press that cannot question the motives or actions of a government is, by definition, not free.  In other words, as a consequence of capitalism and a primarily libertarian media system, critical thinking is stripped from the responsibilities (or capabilities) of journalists and reporters.  Without critical thinking, it is difficult for reporters and viewers to challenge assumptions, pursue cultural relativism, and establish alternative ways of thinking.

NFS5029 Week 11 Initial Post

This week’s article “Objectivity and Government manipulation” by Parenti focused in on one part of journalism that most reporters and news agencies miss so often, objectivity. So much of what we are fed as consumers is bias, partisan news that we are continually left searching for the other side of the story. Although it can be easy to critique the news, it is one form of media that affects all of our lives.

Parenti begins his argument by stating that although it is something that must happen in journalism, objectivity is very difficult to achieve. “Objectivity means that reporters should avoid becoming politically active, and should keep their distance from their subjects, while commentators, editors, and owners socialize and dine with corporate leaders …”.   Through this class and various other classes at Penn State, I have begun understand the tint that each major news station has in comparison to the others. Similar to Parenti, I find it difficult for these news reporters to be absolutely objective when they are working for a larger corporation who wants particular stories to run and to be swung a certain way.  As we’ve learned in past lectures, the elite 5 conglomerates of the news media are essentially the gatekeepers in this exchange. They are in the business for one reason and that is to make the most impact on society while making the top dollar. One interesting point that Parenti pointed out was a list of all of the critical questions that one agency uses in order to sort what is relevant news. Parenti continues on with the process of gaining a news story. How effective do you think these questions were in picking news stories and how does the ‘branding’ of one conglomerate influence these questions?

Along with giving many examples of how a news corporation publishes a story, he also lists and analyzes the other factors of getting a story to print. One factor that I found interesting was that in any given news agency there is a hierarchical factor that effects every decision.  Being part of a dominant ideology, many reporters favor and will only cover news that falls in this dominant ideology. As a job of a reporter I understand that there is too much information but when you are responsible for the public I find it difficult to only allow these dominant ideologies to control our major news sources. For many of us these news sources are the only outlets that many consumers use to get their daily news.

Parenti

What is objectivity? When I started reading this article, I thought objectivity was being free from preconceived notions. I thought it could be achieved. Parenti, however, claims that total objectivity can never, ever truly occur. Parenti also claims that under this myth of objectivity, we try to “neutralize ourselves, but only really neutralize the what we are trying to convey. Perhaps we attribute this problem to the world being too large to cover every story that breaks. However, many stories break from smaller publications and eventually are picked up or squashed by larger media outlets. Parenti also brings up the point that we still expect media to be free and independent, though we can obviously see that the media is pretty heavily biased. The government also factors in to the predicament of censorship. Policy, political messages, and leadership change, and change the media with them.

I found the “Project Censored” excerpt to be incredibly interesting. Essentially, a panel assembles and reviews media stories that have been overlooked by mass media. Some of the stories that were mentioned were absolutely newsworthy but were kept out of the mainstream media anyway. Should the general public know about US corporations that were Nazi sympathizers or that the United States is actually a nuclear weapons monger when interacting with the United Nations? Absolutely! This really reminded me of the Steubenville case that has been in the news lately. Just as some news pieces are squashed, the horrible crimes committed by rapists (see what I did there, eh? Not students, not athletes… RAPISTS) were covered up by parents, coaches, school administrators, and essentially, an entire town. Of course, the Steubenville case actually came to light, but the mass media still failed majorly in the reporting of the verdict. Thanks, Poppy Harlow.

I think, for the most part, people realize that media is biased. In my opinion, National Public Radio does the best job of delivering news quickly, effectively, and pretty unbiased. However, I know many people who would never listen to this side of liberal media. Ironically, they are probably the same people who listen to FOX News. I think FOX News shouldn’t really be allowed to call themselves “news.” That’s false advertising. I think they should be named People Saying Conservative Things And Making Stuff Up, or PSCTAMSU, for short. Would someone who regularly watches FOX News try to argue that it’s an unbiased news source? Probably not. Would I argue that MSNBC isn’t liberal? Nope. But we still gravitate to these news outlets because of a pretty prevalent confirmation bias. Is this wrong?

mjf5313 – Week 11 Post

The reading for this week was rather long, but fortunately there was only one, so it was easy to focus on the one reading rather than getting multiple articles mixed up. The article “Objectivity and Government Manipulation” written by Parenti discusses how the journalism in the media is not as objective as we may think. Because corporations are having so much power, they in fact have a lot of control over the media, and because corporate interests are found throughout the media, objectivity can be blurred. I have mixed thoughts about this topic, because of course journalism should be objective with no biases, but unfortunately this is pretty hard to accomplish. The media and the news need to make money to thrive, so to me it is understandable to change the information a little bit to connect with the audience through both positive and negative feelings. In my opinion, if the news was to be one hundred percent objective, then people would not be watching as much. Parenti also discusses in the article that certain news organizations repeatedly attack the major business and the government. According to the article, during the 30 minutes we watch the news, there is such a small fraction of it discussing the important current events surrounding the world. The majority of the news discusses the flashy and interesting information that people want to read/see. Thought I already knew this, it is still interesting to see how pretty much everyone knows that the media does this, but nothing ever changes. To me, we are seeing the same news, just on different days. It is understandable that the news does not cover the horrific situations occurring in the world such as the fatalities during the war, and other graphic images that may turn people away from the news. If the news spent more time on portraying what is really going on out there, then people might become a little depressed, and cease to watch the news. The movie that we watched Monday discussed the negative aspects of the big corporations that we do not see each day. It seems that these corporations will pretty much do everything and anything to earn a profit, no matter the effects.  The movie and article for this week, have both further taught me how biased and untrustworthy the news and media can be. Unfortunately, I do not believe that changing the way our media presents information can benefit the citizens of the U.S. If the media changes its objectives, then the viewership will most likely decline.