Archive for date: June 27th, 2016

I have often heard individuals argue over the question, is there really such a thing as free press? Are we really capable of sharing unbiased, politically neutral opinions or are they just that, simply opinions?  McChesney (2002) answers a few of these questions by exploring the background and role of professional journalism in their academic slides titled: Into the Buzz Saw: Leading journalists expose the myth of free press.  These slides take a well-rounded approach to exploring this subject leading with a brief history of journalism and the term free press. I was drawn to the 18th century approach of political neutrality in journalism and surprised to read that they assumed that “if the government could outlaw or circumscribe newspapers, it effectively eliminate the ability of opposition parties or movements to mobilize popular support.” (McChesney, 2002, pg. 3). I am curious do you think that this was an ethical approach? I would argue that no, it is not; I think that this goes against everything that we hold dear as Americans. That is not free speech.

 Additionally, this article brought to light the three biases of professional journalism. These are: to remove the controversy connected with the selection of stories, there had to be a news hook or news peg to justify a news story, smuggles in values conducive to the commercial aims of the owners and advertisers as well as political aims of the owning class. (McChesney, 2002, pg. 7-9). This owning class more often than not consists of large, unethical corporations who spend billions of dollars to have power over what we see in the media. In the pdf summary Democracy & the News, Robert McChesney concedes that “the sad truth is that the closer a story gets to corporate power and corporate domain of our society, the less reliable the news media are.” (McChesney, 2002, pg. 375).  In other words, McChesney believes that the news media we view today has been infiltrated by those who are corrupt and do not have our best interests as a society at heart.  What is more important, is how our youth are being swayed by these unreliable media messages and the effects that they will have on our future.  Were you aware of these biases prior to reading this article? I felt that, intrinsically, I was aware of the last bias, but the other two escaped my notice.  Since I was a teenager, I have avoided following many mainstream news sources for this very reason. I have always felt that there was something off about the stories, and now I know why.  Do you find yourself being more distrustful of the journalistic news stories after viewing this pdf?

I always assumed that children, up until they reached puberty, could be swayed by advertisements without critiquing them. I was surprised then to read in chapter 10: Consumption and Materialism of our class textbook,  Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, that “research indicates that children under six may be critical of ads, and by the age of eight nearly all children are skeptical of advertisers’ claims.” (Sternheimer, 2013, pg. 256). My mind was blown over here! Yet, when I thought about it, this makes complete sense. As Sternheimer goes on to describe, children these days are so exposed to various forms of media, that it only makes sense that they would be able to apply the lessons that they learn in the world around them, particularly critical thinking skills, to the messages they view on the media. It is because of our fears that we are so quick to write children off as being completely able to be mindlessly swayed by media advertisements. As a parent I can relate to this. It is frightening to think that an institution may have such a direct effect on your child. Especially one that is being overrun by corporations and billionaires who most likely do not have your child’s best interest at heart.

I was saddened, but not entirely shocked when I read the statistics provided in the article Who gets to speak on cable news?.  Growing up, my parents watched both local and national news channels at dinner almost every night. While I did not know it at the time, I did that the news anchors, as well as the majority of guest speakers featured were predominantly white. This is still a problem today, as FAIR discovered in their five week observation experiment that “eighty four percent of guests were white (848).” There was great variance among each individual channel, but it seemed as I combed through the data that featuring white males over other races and genders was the overarching trend. I found this to be the case when I completed my own assessment of the news channels for assignment 6 of module 5. Admittedly, I was a little shocked to see that the channel frequently featured an african american FEMALE news anchor. Especially after viewing the GMMP information provided in the Who Makes the News video clip where they stated that although 51% of the world’s population is female only 24% of news anchors are female. (GMMP, 2015).  However, this news anchor’s stories were always introduced by a white male, or verified by a white male as though what she had to say was only important once it was acknowledged by her white male counterpart. Which frankly made me irritated and reiterated why I do not personally watch mainstream news channels. I believe that they like to pretend that diversity exists on these channels because they feature women and individuals of different ethnicity’s, when in reality these people end up falling into the “smurfette” principle. While these problems do exist in media, it is also the media that can be used to educate young people that these societal problems still very much reside in plain view.

After reading chapter 11: Beyond Popular Culture, I believe that Karen Sternheimer would agree with my point of view. Sternheimer argues that “pop culture matters; media analysis is a great tool for exposing the complexities of issues like violence, gender, sexuality, racism, and homophobia.” (Sternheimer, 2013, pg. 283). To me, this paragraph alone answers the question that I have been silently asking myself and answering for every module completed, “why does media education matter?” What is more important, this chapter showcases the ways in which t1he media may be used to give light to the aforementioned issues. Sternheimer asserts that “ we should engage in more media analysis,” as a society, instead of simply acknowledging that the issues exist. By becoming media literate, through the implementation of media education in the classroom, American students may use the tools that they engage with on a daily basis, such as web 2.0, to break down  the messages given to them and analyze the content for what it really is. It is my hope, that through teacher facilitated media education activities, we may teach even the youngest members of society to see through the tactics that media organizations use to lure their audience in and grab their attention. One such tactic, the one that is most used in the news in my opinion, is fear. In, The News Bias: Distorting reality and feeding fears, Radford points out that “the media profit from fear mongering through sensationalized headlines.” (Radford, 2003, pg. 3). I see this every day on my Facebook feed. Which means that the generation that is younger than mine also sees it. FAIR.org tells us that we may detect media bias by watching our for this type of “loaded language.” (Fair.org, 2016). Do you often see these tactics being used in social media by news networks and journalists to increase engagement or sway their audience?

Wow group can you believe it, this is our very last blog. During this last module I noticed some trends. The first trend I noticed was, much of what we talked about in previous modules built upon what we are learning now. The other major trend I noticed was we seem to trust the media more than we should especially the local news we watch frequently.

In the first set of slides on media and democracy what primarily stood out to me was the section on media consolidation. I had no idea that the majority of the media was controlled through a handful of billion dollar corporations. I was thinking to myself how I was so blind to how the media is run. I always assumed that such channels like ABC or Disney Channel just produced media for their broadcast. Each of these corporations dictates every form of media that gets released. TV shows, the movie industries, music producing you name it they control it. These large companies such as Disney are always looking for ways to expand making it merely impossible for independent companies to make it on their own. Another impact these so called mega-corporations have is influence on the news. These mega-corporations have become experts responding to the demands of what society wants to see on the news. However the demands are actually demands of what the media makers want to see as influential while we watch the daily news.  The main purpose of the “news media is to aim for the desired middle and upper-middle-class for their target audience” (McChesney, 2002, P. 374). As we’ve learned in module 3 when we discussed the lack of recognition the lower and poor class in the media the same subject is being brought up again. McChesney states that “Stories of great importance to tens of millions of American’s will fall through the cracks because those are not the “right” Americans” (McChesney, 2002, P. 375). The standards that are set by the media are only equal to some economic classes as we’ve seen.  Since that is the sad reality the poor and lower class isn’t receiving any support. I thought this section about mega-corporations related so closely to Sternheimer’s chapter 11 that reveals inequality is the real problem we face. Society let alone the media often does a low quality job providing equality to all people. The media likes to take sides (without you knowing) in representing what news stories are important over others.  The last section of the McChesney slides I thought made a great point. It says “we need to press for democratic values rather than the interests of capital” the way this countries morals are set. Media has taken away the right for its citizens to have a say in what goes. This is why it is important for us to push for supporting independent media makers it is more valuable and equal to all people in society.

The next section of slides titles Democracy and the News was a list of well thought out quotes of how the media shown on the news influences us with the little information they actually give us. The biggest harm media power can yield is not in creating killers, but in creating complacency. This complacency is not due to fictional entertainment, as we so often fear; it is created from news reports based on emotion and drama rather than citizenship. We are lulled not by music or movies or video games, but by programs passing as news that only skim the surface of what we need to know about our government, our corporations, our society (Sternheimer, 2003, p. 219). That quote by Sternheimer really shows how trusting we are of the media. It seems that most people have more trust in the media than they do about most things. The News on TV, on the radio, or on the internet is often poor representations of what the news story actually is yet we have so much faith in what we are seeing. The news picks out the bad and the fear and will leave us worrying when the next tragedy will happen. That is their goal to let them gain our control and influence about the news we are exposed to. But now let’s think of the flip side. We know that news that enables fear in us is shown everyday but what about the good news in the media, where is that? In Radford’s article “The News Bias Distorting Reality and Feeding Fears” addresses what happens to good news in the media. Radford states good news is no news in the media’s eyes. When was the last time we heard about something good happening in the news? If your answer is something other than once in blue moon then I would like to be directed to your source of news to make my news experience more delightful. Radford’s answer was simple good news doesn’t nearly get as much airtime as bad news, if the story “bleeds it leads” (Radford, 2003, p. 74). I think that quote is a disappointing reality about news, only if the news story seems fearful will it headline. However when a good news story is relevant it is placed on the back burner to replace it with the fear driven or negatively impacted message.  When a good news story is advertised instead of being uplifting it will be titled “some youth violence declines” it is rarely looked upon with a smile rather than passing off the story as less valuable.

The next sections of articles I thought were important touched upon the subject of who gets to speak on news channels, who is seen, and what point of view is the news taken from. In the article How to detect bias in news media mentioned a good point about the lack of diversity. The article says if you notice race and gender being unequally represented in the news outlet we watch that we should demand fairness. This article goes on to say that if there is a discussion panel of all men or an all-white crowd that they should alter their diversity to those in the public they serve. Which makes a valid point that if we sit back and don’t voice change how do we expect to see change? In an article that relates “who gets to speak on cable news?” by Peter Hart brings up a survey that was given over a five week period. After the survey was taken something major was noticed. Most of the news stories only featured men compared to women. The amount of male guest outnumbered women drastically, 730 men compared to 285 women a 72% of male population in the news (Hart, 2014, n.p.) But this wasn’t the only noticeable difference, 84% of the people on the news survey were white. This meant that only 16% of people seen were of color. These were shocking results about who is seen and speaks in the news. A third aspect to this article that I thought had value was the political party standpoint of which the message was given. In this survey the amount of republicans were outnumbered by the democrats on most news stations. The view is which a message is give is important since the republican and democratic views differ. The next article Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs can help us define what standpoint an article is coming from. A good example I found was on terrorism.  Terrorism from a liberals view will think that global warming is a larger threat than terrorism. Liberals don’t believe in relying on military forces to defeat terrorists, they think that leads to more terrorism. From a conservative view they think terrorism is the biggest threat to the U.S. Conservatives want terrorists stopped and destroyed. Using intelligence-gathering and military force is the best way to defeat terrorists. After reading this article it helped me better define the differences between the two and see the different views the news may have.

Continuing our discussion about the news and the media the GMMP (global media monitoring project) video we watched had a lot to say about gender inequality in the news. This video informed us that in their project only 24% of people in the news were women which meant men dominated the news at 76%. The project also found that 37% of reporters were female and 63% of men were reporters that took the crucial role talking about our economy, crime, and politics. Another important detail the video pointed out was that women are also misrepresented in the news. The news likes to reveal stereotypes about both men and woman, that women are seen as sex objects and men are seen as strong entrepreneurs. Women are seen as feminine and men are seen as masculine. They explained the news to be gender blind where the viewpoints of other genders such as a woman’s viewpoint won’t be shared. In the video we saw that men outnumber women in the media, especially in professions. Women are often shown as homemakers and not seen as independent which is very stereotypical. This video brought to my attention that news does more than give us news about the world but it also will categorize and stereotype to make stories sound more interesting.  And lastly this video represented to me that inequality in the news goes far beyond gender stereotyping. Inequality is all over the news in what stories are fairly represented in our media.

Based off the topic of inequality chapter 11 in Sternheimer’s book deeply touches upon the topic. I am again bringing up topic of poverty as I did earlier in this blog because Sternheimer brings up an excellent detail of how we view inequality in the media. Ads for starving children in faraway places might gain out sympathy, but poor American children are often seen as invisible or just seen as a threat to public safety (Sternheimer, 2013, P.275). This country’s media fails to recognize the 15 million children who live in poverty. When stories about poverty come up they often leave an emotional response in our minds (which it should) but instead of acting upon it, poverty is ignored and not further thought about. Ignoring an important part of our society will not make the problem go away but rather the problem of poverty will increase without any recognition. The lack of poverty in the news is an inequality. The media is ignoring a large group of people due to their ego in society. Sternheimer states it doesn’t have to be this way our media is “so enchanting, so attention seeking, it can be used to redirect our attention to the sources of our society’s problems and give a wakeup call about the persistence of inequality in the United States” (Sternheimer, 2013, p. 286). This statement proves that we need to keep our society’s real challenges in our view. This country is a democracy and we should be able to have a say in ensuring equality is provided for those who live and battle in poverty, because we are all equally important.

I saved the best for last chapter 10 from Sternheimer, A New Generation of Greed. When reading this chapter it reminded me the last module’s video the story of stuff. Both the book and the video revealed that we are living in a world where all we do is consume products. Sternheimer points out that we are a greedy nation that our happiness depends upon materialistic goods. But where do we get this greed from? Is it the influence from all the commercials and advertisements on the media? Many would answer that yes we (especially children) get our sense of urgency from the media items that are promoted to us. We seem to want the newest phone, the newest car, newest clothes but where the influence comes from isn’t all from the media. Our desires to fulfill our happiness stems from what others in society will think of us. Now relating to children, how much a child wants is in the control of the parents. If a parent is easily talked into buying their child a product then the chances of them asking for more is greater. A survey said that 94% of parents think children are spoiled but only 55% of parents think their own kids are (Sternheimer, 2013, p.251). I think parents are blind to how much money is spent on their child’s short term happiness. Children are becoming more selfish Sternheimer explains not because media is exploiting children to products but that parents are allowing it. Parents are all about pleasing their children and making sure they have new products so that their child doesn’t feel left out. But that is only part of the answer, since our society has turned into a consumption-orientated society or economy depends upon people spending money on things most of the time we don’t need. The economies forces shape our buying habits and pressure parents into “guilt money” to spend on their children to make up for time they lost while working more so they can buy more stuff (Sternheimer, 2013, p. 250). These facts brought out the ugly truth behind producers of products. They are successful making millions and billions of dollars while our society is over worked to provide for our materialistic needs. Concluding this last thought is that advertisers alone aren’t to blame for out consumption problems. Our social structure is distracted by the lust of materials causing us to make poor financial decisions and make us want more than what we have. This last section really name me realize how caught up in the world we are, and how there are influences all around us that encourage our motivations to buy excess products we don’t need.

While reading Who Gets To Speak On Cable News, I learned that guest speakers were coded by race, gender, ethnicity, and occupation, as well as the relationship of follower guests. On Fox News, republicans were featured more then democrats. Looking into Fox News, I seemed to me that they are more of a in your face type of news. They want you to hear what they want you to hear instead of whats happening in the world. They were the only news station that was reporting different things that the other stations I flipped through. They like to cut people off when they are saying things Fox doesn’t approve of. I also learned that Fox news shows were mostly white and that male guests widely outnumbered women on every show. It was interesting.

Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs broke down many things that I was confused about in general. I learned that Liberals are more for equality and unity whole conservatives is more of a every man for themselves.  Going through each belief, it was eye opening because it was informative! It’s very interesting to see the beliefs of each category, because they are the opposites of each other. While reading them, I found myself going back and forth reviewing the pros and cons of each belief. I can say that I am in the middle of everything. It was investing an interesting to read and review but goes on in the beliefs of other peoples political views.

In Chapter 10, I learned that children continue to be the main focus of hyper-consumption fears. Children tend to be influential. Sternheimer brought to our attention the word “Kidfluence” from a Us News & World Report.  This word is said to mean that children have the power to influence their parents when it came to ‘purchasing decisions’. In my own household, that is true. Although, my sister and I are no longer considered kids, we still have an influence on our parents. they always tend to come to use for technical advise and we tend to push on them the different outputs were using whether it be a windows tablet or a mac iphone. We always influence their decision making. This can be because we are influenced by the media and the makers of the media messages. I enjoy my Iphone and always tend to upgrade when the newest one comes out. The media makers or the advertising can be the one to blame for me spending so much money on a phone, but it is I, who falls for the temptation and buys the materialistic item(s).

1. Hart, Peter. “Who Gets to Speak on Cable News?” FAIR. N.p., 01 July 2014. Web. 27 June 2016. <http://fair.org/extra/who-gets-to-speak-on-cable-news/>.
2. “Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs.” Student News Daily Conservative vs Liberal Beliefs Comments. Student News Daily, 2010. Web. 27 June 2016. <http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/conservative-vs-liberal-beliefs/>.
3. Sternheimer, K. (2013). Consumption and Materialism. In Connecting social problems and popular culture: Why media is not the answer (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press (245-271).

This Module involving news biases and the impact media has on our brains was very interesting to me, especially since the significance of social media was starting to come up throughout our readings.  As Benjamin Radford described in his article, “The News Bias: Distorting Reality and Feeding Fears”, news biases distort reporting and change how we understand and react to the world around us.  As a result, the news media creates myths that come to shape our world (pg. 65).  Hearing his description of what news bias is and what is can do to our society, I could not help but think about all the controversial issues taking place around the world and how the news is in control of what we see and, ultimately, the true facts.

This concept was further shown within the three biases that are believed to be the foundation of today’s professional journalism.  In an effort to avoid controversies, news companies regard anything done by official sources as the basis for legitimate news.  This allows companies to tell viewers to point their fingers at government officials and prominent public figures rather than the news company itself.  To also avoid controversy, professional journalism will hide values conducive to the commercial aims of the owners and advertisers as well as the political aims of whoever owns the news company.  This is why we are lead to believe that certain stories about crime and celebrities actually matter while also never antagonizing people in power (McChesney, 2002).

Going back to Radford’s findings, he quoted journalism scholar Roy Peter Clark who told fellow journalists to “beware of stories that fit familiar patterns […] journalists sometimes go on automatic pilot when they report such events, relying on preconceptions and writing stories that omit or discount facts that don’t fit the mold” (pg. 66).  Radford continued to describe how the media profits by putting fear into what we are viewing.  Nothing gets viewers to tune in to a news program like fear: fear of war, fear of disease, fear of death, fear of harm coming to loved ones (Radford, p. 66).  These points really made me stop and think for a minute about all the stories that tend to fill our news lately and wonder if there is a reason why they are so familiar, for example, why are we seeing shooting after shooting after shooting filling the news?  And aside from fear of disease or death, the media is even using fear to cause us to go out and buy their products.  As Sternheimer described in her book Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, even our youth is being consumed with the fear of being “uncool” should they be unable to have the latest and greatest item (pg. 246).  The idea that fear is what these companies use to control us really bothers me, but unfortunately it works so they are going to continue this technique until further notice.  But thanks to media literacy, hopefully we can start giving companies a run for their money and we’ll start seeing honest and true news and advertising being shown… a girl can dream, right?!