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Fox, Msnbc, The New York Times… The news, in all its formats, dominates our lives. It’s where we get our information about what’s going on in the world. When we wake up in the morning, it’s what we leave our houses to collect; what we turn on the TV to see. We read it online, in paper, and on TV. It’s an inevitable part of life. The news the media feeds us… most often, it’s anything but hopeful. Stories about shootings in cities or children drowning in pools or terrorist attacks; sometimes, stories that haven’t even happened, stories labeled with a large ‘if’; these stories have a large effect on our lives in the fear they impose on our daily activities. We see these stories and assume that’s the way life is; a dangerous world where the wrong turn will get you killed. In America, as technology advances and culture adapts to an ever-changing society, one element, the element of fear, is being blown completely out of proportion; abused and manipulated by the mainstream media and large news networks to boost ratings and attract viewers. However, the media is not aware of the dire effect on the American people. Fear, in this dosage, can be deadly.
It’s true that the world the media shows us is not exactly reality. Elements are exaggerated; facts torn askew and threats dramatized. Life is shown as a hyperbole; everything exaggerated. From body image to potential threats in the nation, from the supposed fallout the nation is in to the reality of the situation, the news networks have a tendency to be blown out of proportion.
While, not necessarily present in news networks, other forms of media, such as magazines, commercials, and websites illustrate a body image that is nowhere close to reality. It’s a very present danger in people’...
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...normally not believe unless we were influenced by another person. But we can still choose not to believe them, by taking action or even simply by further researching the things we are told by the media to find out what truly is fact, and what is simply fiction.
Works Cited
Acosta, Judith. "Fear and The Media." Words Are Medicine. OpedNews.com, Oct. 2006. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.
Becker, Gavin De. "Media Fear Tactics." Gavin De Becker & Associates. Gavin De Becker & Associates, Inc., July 2010. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.
Galt, John. "Cultivation Theory and Fear in the Media, Page 2 of 8." Associated Content from Yahoo! - Associatedcontent.com. Yahoo!, 2 Oct. 2007. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.
Meter, Mallory, and Jacob Minnaugh. "Be Afraid, America. Be Very Afraid: The Effect of Negative Media « Neuroanthropology." Neuroanthropology. Scribd.com, 25 Apr. 2010. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.
In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air
The media takes a biased approach on the news that they cover, giving their audience an incomplete view of what had actually happened in a story. Most people believe that they are not “being propagandized or being in some way manipulated” into thinking a certain way or hearing certain “truths” told by their favorite media outlets (Greenwald 827). In reality, everyone is susceptible to suggestion as emphasized in the article “Limiting Democracy: The American Media’s World View, and Ours.” The
The media’s influence over the masses of society is great. With every passing generation, the media’s ability to access and relay information to the general public with seemingly the greatest of ease continues to impress. Given the expanse of time that has passed since the 1990s, the media, even more so to this day, shapes our lives, our perceptions, and influences our opinions greatly. The 1990s served as an important decade in our country’s young history. Since the mid-1800s, and even before that time, our country has experienced its share of societal issues, from racism to sexism, to religious bigotry, and police brutality, to name a few.
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.
Bonila, Denise M., and Levy, Beth, Eds. The Power of the Press. H. W. Wilson, 1999.
Looking the historical moment we are living at, it is undeniable that the media plays a crucial role on who we are both as individuals and as a society, and how we look at the...
Snowball, David. "Propaganda and its Discontents." Journal of Communication 49.3 (2009): 165-71. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Bennett (2011) felt that one of the biggest problems with bias in the American media was its “overwhelming tendency to downplay the big social, economic, or political picture in favor of the human trials, tragedies, and triumphs (177).” Shaiko (2008) alluded to the fact that the American news media is “accountable to the corporate conglomerates” and not “to the readers, listeners, and viewers (205).” Probably the most telling quotation of all can be found in Chapter 10 of The News Media: Communicating Pol...
Malcolm X once said “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” In 1990, fifty-nine year old Delbert Ward was accused of killing his brother Bill Ward. Delbert was one of four brothers who lived on the family’s land operating a small farm producing milk from cows. During and after Delbert’s trial, loads of media preyed upon the ill-educated man and the village like vultures. Given his impoverished surroundings and his appearance, the media depicted Delbert as a salvage who killed his brother on the same bed that they shared for years. The documentary “Brother’s Keeper” investigated the truth behind the death of Bill Ward. It presents the argument that media manipulates public opinion. Media does manipulate public opinion using many techniques to influence the minds of the mass. The media’s effectiveness, level of bias present, and types of the media source used to portray information to determine how media influence public opinion, as well as address the opposing view to the argument.
David. "Mass Media and the Loss of Individuality." Web log post. Gatlog. N.p., 11 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 May 2014.
Mass Media. Ed. William Dudley. Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2005. 121-130.
The cultivation theory suggests that “the cultivation of attitudes is based on attitudes already present in our society and that the media take those attitudes which are already present and re-present them bundled in a different packaging to their audiences” (Griffin, p.366). The Truman Show is an excellent example of the cultivation theory as it gives us an interesting insight into the effects that the media has on society. It is no secret that the media has altered our way of living. From the fears they can instill from the news we watch, to the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the sports we watch and even our political opinions are all influenced in some way shape or form by the media.
Vargas, L E. (2013) The Negative Effects of The Media on Body Image. Personal.psu.edu. Retrieved 30 Nov. 17 from:
TV and fear of victimization (. 10), see Michael Morgan and James Shanahan, “Two Decades of Cultivation Research: An Appraisal and