Introduction Since newspaper is a major channel for ideological promotion, various parties like politicians, target audience and advertisers are involved in deciding how to report a story (“Media bias”, 2014). In the United States, media bias can be classified into liberal, conservative and corporate (“Media bias in the United States”, 2014). According to Fairclough (2001), language is a primary medium of power relations and ideologies, contributing to a certain group’s domination. By power relations, Fairclough means power difference between classes, genders, ethnic groups and social institutions (2001). In the academic field, media discourse has gained more attention in the past decades. Sociolinguists suggest that mass media exercise their hidden power by controlling readers’ access to knowledge and presenting subjective viewpoints (Fairclough, 2001; Van Dijk, 1993). One of them is Tuen A. van Dijk, who specializes in Critical Discourse Analysis and has written many books or articles on media discourse. In his work Power and the News Media, Van Dijk states that newspapers, which are controlled by power elites, selectively choose “facts” and persuade readers to hold a certain social or political standpoint (Van Dijk, 1997). Other linguists who have done research on the realm include Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Carpentier and De Cleen note the great use of Critical Discourse Analysis for media discourse by bringing up Bell and Garrett’s statement that the approach is a standard framework in dealing with media texts (as cited in Carpentier and De Cleen, 2007). Also cited in their work is Wodak and Busch’s remark that media are public spaces involving power struggles (Carpentier and De Cleen, 2007). Multimodal Discourse A... ... middle of paper ... ...ns deserve better than a ‘no.’ Let’s tell Congress to say ‘yes.’ Pass that bill. Give America a raise.” In the Republican address, Rep. Tom Cotton told the story of a constituent named Elizabeth who saw her premiums rise by 85 percent, he said, as a result of Obamacare. “She’s stopped shopping at locally owned businesses because she can’t afford their prices, so Obamacare is hurting her local community, too,” said Mr. Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who also is running to unseat his state’s Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. “For Elizabeth — and countless other Arkansans just like her — Obamacare is anything but an amazing success story. Her story shows us that this law and the president’s policies are fundamentally flawed … Republicans in Congress are committed to stopping the harms caused by the president’s policies, repairing the damage and getting America working again.”
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
In the second chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me Lowen argues that electronic media has decisively and irriversibly changed the character of our environment. He believes that we are now a culture whose information, ideas and epistemology are given form by televison not by the printed word. Loewen describes how discourse in America is now different from what it once was. Loewwen says discourse was once logical, serious, and rational and now under the governance of television it is shriveled and absurd. In addition, he writes about the definitions of truth and the sources in which the definitions come from. Loewen shows how the bias of a medium is unseen throughout a culture and he gives three examples of truth telling.
Bethany Anne Conway, Addressing the “Medical Malady”: Second-Level Agenda Setting and Public Approval of “Obamacare” Int J Public Opin Res (Winter 2013) 25 (4): 535-546 7 January. 2013
The news media rejects the fact that they are biased. They claim that they are the “middle of the road,” and are neutral on the stories that they cover. Publishers also claim that they are the watchdog for the political system, and they make sure that the system is free of any corruption, or wrongdoing. Th...
398).It is also stated that news divisions reduced their costs, and raised the entertainment factor of the broadcasts put on air. (p. 400). Secondly, the media determines its sources for stories by putting the best journalists on the case and assign them to areas where news worthy stories just emanates. (p.400). Third, the media decides how to present the news by taking the most controversial or relevant events and compressing them into 30 second sound-bites. (p.402). finally, the authors also explain how the media affects the general public. The authors’ state “The effect of one news story on public opinion may be trivial but the cumulative effect of dozens of news stories may be important. This shows a direct correlation between public opinions and what the media may find “relevant”. (Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, 2015, p.
Through manipulation and lies, media manages to modify objective news into biased news in order to convince the public of what the media wants them to believe. The article, “How the Media Twist the News”, by Sheila Gribben Liaugminas discusses the major influence that news has on readers based on their choice of stories and words. “How the Media Twists the News” has borrowed from multiple other texts such as the books like Public Opinion and Liberty and News, news magazine writers such as Ruderman, and news networks like CBS through Bias, A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and CNN to make her arguments valid and prove that the news is biased and that it does influence readers significantly because of it.
When Obamacare, a law passed to guarantee affordable health insurance to all Americans, was put into action it received many responses, and not all of them were positive. Obamacare was portrayed to be a great healthcare initiative and many people supported it. When the law was passed, however, it was revealed that most of it was a big lie. Obamacare should be taken away due to the many problems it has and unbeneficial results it produces, such as, unaffordable health care means fewer people have jobs, the benefits described are not near as nice as they were made out to be, and it is impossible to provide insurance for everybody in the United Sates without raising taxes.
The use of media has always been very tactical and representative of a statement or purpose. The issue of race has always been a topic of immaculate exploration through different forms of media. Mediated topics such as race, gender, and class have always been topics represented in the media as a form of oppression. The widely use of media surrounds the globe extensively as the public is bombarded with media daily. There are many different types of media that circulates the public making it widely available to anyone. Media can hold an immense amount of power as it can distort the manner in which people understand the world. In our society the media creates the dominant ideology that is to be followed for centuries in the classifications of race, gender, and class. Media can be a powerful tool to use to display a message which, is how “…the media also resorts to sensationalism whereby it invents new forms of menace” (Welch, Price and Yankey 36). Media makers and contributors take advantage of the high power that it possesses and begin to display messages of ideologies that represent only one dominant race or gender. It became to be known as the “dominant ideology of white supremacy” for many and all (Hazell and Clarke 6).
In the 2012 Presidential Debates over the Affordable Care Act President Barack Obama said “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But this, in fact, is not the case. Barack Obama mislead voters into believing they could keep their health insurance if you were among the 85% already happily insured. His message was, “ObamaCare will affect the other people, not you” (Troy). ...
Although, in recent years it is seen that consumers are less likely to subscribe to newspapers and/or watch the daily news. This is due to the fact that they are typically bias in their opinions, and are seen to lack the whole story when presented. Rise in polarization in the media is due to a new found competition between news networks, which was not present sixty years ago. Wilson says, “the news we get is not only more omnipresent, it is also more competitive and hence often more adversarial”. The media outlets are fighting for views, and are willing to do whatever it takes to get them. Which leads to them configuring the stories to what people want to here. Thus making their viewer ratings higher. It is known that certain news stations get more views depending on the political party. “Those who watch CNN are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans; the reverse is emphatically true of Fox”. The media has more outlets to reach their viewers to maximize the effectiveness of their biased
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.
Ott, B. L, & Mack, R. L. (2010). Critical media studies: An introduction. Malden, MA: Wiley-
Power use is around us whether noticed or not. Power in Discourse Analysis is a medium to achieve an end. The end is for stronger of the two sides of the discourse. Power in discourse analysis is the use of language in a discourse allowing the person who acquires knowledge and high status in the discourse takes control of the discourse thus having the higher power. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss nature of power argued in Discourse Analysis, attempts made to define ‘power’ in social research and discuss the different types of power.
Media bias is the tendency for the media to represent different people in a particular way based on their own views, the views of their sponsors, and possibly the views of society. Media bias could be blatant, but usually it is subtle. It can be expressed in the content of television shows. It can be expressed in the choices of types of stories that they show on the news. It can be expressed in the language used on shows, and that is written in the newspaper and magazines.
Althusser (1971) explains that, as an ideological state apparatus, media doesn’t use pressure as a way to bind society together under one dominant ideology, but instead uses the will of the people to make them accept the dominant ideology. However, media is also used as a way for people to challenge the dominant ideology. Newspapers, for example, will have articles that openly criticise and oppose the dominant ideology for what it is, whilst at the same time providing perspectives and opinions on different ideologies (such as feminism) that society can believe in. Although these alternate ideological perspectives exist, they are usually overlooked and only ever reach small audiences. Ideology can also help us understand the media because of the way in which it distributes ideology.