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How the media influences the public perception
The role of media in creating bias
Bias in the media examples
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People have always been scared of the truth, whether it is about recognizing their own or others’ flaws, or simply seeing what they received on their latest test. This fear of the unknown or of the unveiling of the truth could affect anyone, anywhere and is prominent in its impact on the news. Universally, people enjoy feeling safe and having the comfort of having someone else to share the same comfort and security. Due to this humanistic desire to find self-security, people including the media sometimes use bias to suggest danger or safety in order to invoke the interest of an audience towards a piece of information and away from the full picture. Throughout the story, Rennie explores not just her own personal psyche, but also that of some
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.
A Bestselling author and co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” is a remarkably confident lady and TV-journalist Mika Brzezinski whose on-air protest between entertainment news & “hard news” received a large number of supports and fans’ responses on 26 June 2007 in which she had refused to read the news about a release of Paris Hilton from Jail rather she considered more important Senator Richard Lugar with President Bush on the war of Iraq breaking news. She stands on these issues rippled over the internet quickly and similar incidents continue on-air on July 7, 2010 on a report about Levi Johnston and Lindsay Lohan over hard news stories with the title “News you can’t use.”
Soghoian, Christopher. “When Secrets Aren’t Safe With Journalists”. The Opinion Pages. The New York Times, 26 October 2011. Web. 17 November 2013.
Fear is not only interconnected to all emotions, but it can also be directly linked to nearly all faucets of everyday life. Society is so driven by fear that it has been the prime causation factor of wars and the driving force behind entire economies. Major news networks capitalize on fear based commentary. They seemingly promote fear by placing strong emphasis on only those stories that highlight things such as corrupt politics, homicide, the bankrupt economy, school shootings, and the so called, “War on Terror.” The News Stations keep people in constant search for the ever-elusive piece of mind. Networks such as MSNBC, CNN, ABC and FOX bring in billions of dollars by conditioning the human psyche with an abundance’s of commercials targeting consumers based on race, ethnicity, status and creed. Big business and Governments intention is to frighten its citizens an...
A good part of Outfoxed focuses on the company's blurring of news and commentary, how anchormen and reporters are encouraged to repeatedly use catch-phrases like "some people say..." as a means of editorializing within a supposedly objective news story; how graphics, speculation and false information are repeated over-and-over throughout the broadcast day until it appears to become fact, and in doing so spreads like a virus and copied on other networks. A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll points to glaring, fundamental misconceptions about the news perpetuated upon Fox viewers, versus information received from widely respected news-gathering organizations like NPR and PBS. Asked, for instance, "Has the U.S. found links between Iraq & al-Qaeda?" only 16% of PBS and NPR viewers answered "yes," but a frightening 67% of Fox viewers believed there had.
They delve into modern day media to dissect the language and pictures used in an effort to protect viewers from unconsciously being swayed by the attitudes therein. They go on to discuss how language can be manipulated, however unconsciously, to show the speaker’s true feelings on the subject. Pictures can likewise be manipulated, if only because they show only a small part of the larger image. They start their show of suspicion by saying “The question then arises: what do viewers have to know about language and pictures in order to be properly armed to defend themselves against the seductions of eloquence (to use Bertrand Russell’s apt phrase)?” (par 1). The idea that one needs to defend themselves automatically brings up a defensive, suspicious attitude. This is further reinforced when the reader is warned that “It means that the viewer must never assume that the words spoken on a television news show are exactly what happened” (par 3). A suspicious attitude in an essay brings about a suspicious attitude in the reader. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all suspicious minds are the least likely to be overtaken by half-truths and empty
In “12 O’Clock News,” Elizabeth Bishop accentuates the difficulty involved in perceiving the “truth.” She utilizes a technique of constructing an exotic world out of objects that can be found in a newsroom. By defamiliarizing a newsroom, she questions our trust in what we perceive. Is it truly a journey to another world or just another perspective on something we are already familiar with? The intent of this transformation is to create a substitute for reality, analogous to the substitute reality which the media presents to us each day as its product, the “news.” The news media are capable of creating a world beyond what we see everyday, presenting us with what appears to be the truth about cultures we will never encounter firsthand. Bishop’s manipulation of a newsroom parallels the way the media distorts our perception of the world, and by doing so questions our ability to find our way out of this fog which is “reality.”
A moral panic can be defined as a phenomenon, frequently initiated by disquieting media and reinforced by responsive laws and public policies, of embellished public concern, angst or anger over a perceived danger to societal order (Krinsky, 2013). The media plays a crucial role in emphasizing a current moral panic. In Jock Young’s chapter Images of Deviance (1971), he comments on the phenomenon of deviance magnification, he deems dramatic media coverage of deviant behaviours to be ironic, owing to the fact that it unintentionally increases rather than restrains the apparent deviance. In hind sight the media create social problems, owing to the fact that they can present them dramatically and are able to do it swiftly (Young & Cohen, 1971: 37).
How many people share our same view about things? Is the media affecting our perception of reality? These questions circulated my thoughts after reading Chapter 30, which introduced the 3rd person affect. McRaney suggests, “A great many messages among the countless ones bombarding you every day are considered dangerous because they might sway other people or fester in their minds until they act out on the suggestions coming out of all manner of sources, from violent video games to late-night pundit programming. For every outlet of information, there are some who see it as dangerous not because it affects them, but because it might affect the thoughts and opinions of an imaginary third party”(McRaney). The media can have both, a positive and negative impact on how it’s affecting and influencing society. Many people don’t acknowledge how they are being affected, but how others are. The mistake to view this issue in that perspective is inaccurate because it’s affecting us all. Specifically, the groups where they don’t share the same beliefs and ideas are the ones who we think are being influenced and bowled over by the messages through media and the world.
Governments distribute propaganda through various forms of media, and citizens of the World State are continuously consuming media. In addition, due to a lack of information about the outside world, people remain unaware that they are being manipulated. A creator of such propaganda stated, “Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about” (Huxley, 188). Members of the media search for inspiration to create prevailing propaganda in order to effectively influence society. Media such as television and newspapers all pass through the “The Propaganda House”, similarly the media today, strive to create emotion invoking news. Journalists are known as “emotion engineers”, and play an instrumental role to control the thoughts of fellow citizens. Instead of distrusting the media, residents respect journalists. To illustrate, "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy—to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all" (Huxley 115-6). Society appreciates the time “emotion engineers” take in order to create the news, and believe journalists keep their lives unpretentious. Without any suspicion or any prior knowledge, these people cannot evaluate the news they consume, and as a result all media is perceived as the
During these difficult economic times sensationalism has become more prevalent in the media. Stories involving sex scandals and child murders have taken over our T.V and internet screens as well as the front pages of our newspapers. The media bias of sensationalism has been used as a sort of escapism for readers. Although it may seem that sensationalism has just started making waves, it has been around for decades. Sensationalism has been influencing viewers and contributing to media bias since the days of the penny press. Sensationalisms long history has been turbulent, self-serving, and influential to today’s reporting practices. With the influence over readers’ sensationalism’s media bias have and will continue to affect media reporting for years to come.
Television is a vital source from which most Americans receive information. News and media delegates on television have abused theirs powers over society through the airing of appealing news shows that misinform the public. Through literary research and experimentation, it has been proven that people's perception of reality has been altered by the information they receive from such programs. Manipulation, misinterpretation, word arrangement, picture placement and timing are all factors and tricks that play a major role in the case. Research, experimentation, and actual media coverage has pinpointed actual methods used for deceptive advertising. Television influences society in many ways. People are easily swayed to accept a belief that they may not normally have unless expressed on television, since many people think that everything they hear on television is true. This, however, is not always the case. It has been observed that over the past twenty to thirty years, normal social behavior, even actual life roles of men and women and media, regulatory policies have all been altered (Browne 1998). Media has changed with time, along with quality and respectability. Many Americans receive and accept false information that is merely used as an attention grabber that better the show's ratings and popularity. Many magazines and Journal reviews have periodically discussed the "muckraking" that many tabloid shows rely on to draw in their viewers. This involves sensationalizing a story to make it more interesting, therefore increasing the interest of the audience. "Along the way, all sorts of scandalous substance and goofy tricks appear, but not much mystery in the logic," (Garnson 1997). People often know that these shows aim to deceive them, but still accept the information as truth. Many times, people have strong opinions on certain topics. Yet, when they are exposed to the other side of the argument, they may be likely to agree with the opposite view. As Leon Festinger said, "If I chose to do it (or say it), I must believe in it," (Myers 1997). This is an example of Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, which pertains to acting contrary to our beliefs. Television influences many people to change their original beliefs. It has the viewers think that the majority of other people hold the contrary idea. Once these views are presented, people have the option to hol...
There are many types of diverse people classified under various categories. Some people have different types of personalities. They could be classified as extremely manipulative, others as impulsive, and some may not show anything on the outside and have wonderful social skills. These categories help in the understanding of humans. This study is called Psychology and there are many different subfields in this diverse study of the people around us. One subfield that is particularly interesting is personality psychology. Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and its variation between individuals.
In extreme situations, journalists choose the angle they can find, tick the boxes to the news worthiness, but never having a stand. According to Kempf, journalists fulfill certain criteria of newsworthiness and fake empirical evidence, which implements propaganda and in the journalists’ defense “that it did not matter the pictures were faked since they only showed what people already ‘knew’ and since they served the goal of opening the eyes of the public” (Kempf 2002, p. 60). Various examples from the War on Terror, where journalists and reporters would fake evidence just to gain more audiences but examples like this could elevate the issues, and it is as if this responsibility of Journalism of Attachment only adds fuel to the fire and this is done in the name of peace (Kempf 2002).
Since the television was invented in 1924, news and current affairs programs have surly become one of our main media sources. With this in mind, reporters and stations alike are able to manipulate their audiences through a variety of techniques, to make them believe a representation of reality as opposed to the true fact. This is evident in the current affairs story “Video Game Violence” and the standard news story “Music Video Ban”. These similar stories both originated from Channel Nine and represent violence in society’s youth today, stating children are at risk if exposed to such material. Through a selection of techniques, the audience is lured into supporting the told story and agreeing with the general attitudes promoted.