Module 5 Reflection

I found this week’s readings to be just as important and interesting as the last four weeks. Influence, democracy and agency were the central themes this week and I could see them in all of the readings. I think most of us agree that there is bias in broadcasting stations. According to Benjamin Radford, news feeds into fears and creates many myths that we then shape our society with (2003, p. 65). I really like when he discusses the idea that most of us think we know and understand a story when we hear it on the news, but it’s just not possible for that to happen when we see just 1 to 2 minute clips  (p. 66). News only gives us part of the story and doesn’t go too deep into it. One way that news stations become biased is that reporters tend to interview people with same beliefs and ideas as themselves (p. 78). I found that interesting because I don’t think many of us, myself included, think about news reporters that way. We think they are finding information from both sides of the story, but this may not be true. There are ways we can detect bias in news reporting. According the article, “How to Detect Bias in News Media”, we can ask ourselves who the sources are, if their is diversity, whose point of view is it from, are there double standards, if their are stereotypes, if their is loaded language and is their a lack of context just to name a few (FAIR, n.d.). Learning to ask these types of questions is a great media literacy skill.

We see bias a lot in news when it come to politics. In the article, “Who Gets to Speak on Cable News?”, we see that different news stations fall onto different sides of the political spectrum. Fox News Channel features more republicans than democrats as well as the O’Reilly Factor and Hannity (Hart, 2014). MSNBC and Rachel Maddow had more democratic guests than republican guests (Hart, 2014). Different news shows also feature different amounts of diverse groups, some feature more than others. Republicans, or Conservatives, believe in personal responsibility and limited government while Democrats, or Liberals, believe in strong government and equality for everyone (Student News Daily, 2010). When watching news, if you see more of these ideas than others, it may give you a good idea as to what side they fall under. As stated previously, diversity and political parties are thinks we can look our for when determining if a news station is biased. We cannot really control what the media says because of our first amendment, freedom of speech and press. According to Karen Sternheimer from the slides, what we see in the news is only a small portion of what we need to know is going on in our government (2003, p.219). Media has a lot of power and can influence the way we think and feel so it is important to keep an eye our for biased messages.

The last readings that I read were chapters 10 and 11 from out textbook. Chapter 10, on consumption and materialism was really interesting to me as a college student. Growing up watching shows like My Super Sweet 16 and Cribs made me want so many things that I couldn’t have. I dreamed of having a huge party and a super cool house, but that just wasn’t reality for me. According to Sternheimer, this isn’t just children and young adults who want the same (2013, p. 245). Adults want things they can’t afford just like children and teens. I thought it was really interesting when she mentioned that when teens were interviewed, they said they would be happier if they had more money so they could buy things for themselves (246). That is so sad to me. What I got out of the next chapter, chapter 11, is that media and pop culture do not cause all of the problems children, teens, and young adults face today. Media is easy to blame for these things but there are other causes. Media happens to represent these issues such as bullying, teen pregnancy and eating disorders. Basically what I got out of it is that media is not to blame for everything even though its easy and we may want to.