Investigating News and News Manipulation
In this essay I shall give reference to what news is and the
manipulation used by News agencies who select information at a
particular time for a particular audience, giving examples of two news
articles I have found in ‘The Guardian’ news paper to help portray how
they achieve this.
News is fresh events reported through media. It is most often than not
stories that effect people all over the world. News is gathered mainly
by primary research in order to be accurate in articles written and to
find a angel to the story. When news agencies (which are companies
that supply most of the media in the western world, with stories of
major events and the way they should be perceived by readers) decides
a story does not fit in with their agenda they do not print it and
leave readers uninformed. Usually stories that seem more important to
the readers are used. Once the articles have been written up it is
then up to the Gatekeeper who is usually a news editor or sub-editor
decides which stories make the final cut and once they have been
chosen they then prioritised the articles most commonly the ones they
believe to be more important go to the ones they believe to be
important go to the front, the first page being the most important
story in their opinion and are organised in order of priority after
that, from the front to the back of the news paper. News bias also
plays a big role in the way the article is presented and what angle it
is given.
Looking at ‘The Guardian’ dated Friday 15th October’ I have found two
articles. I have found that according to news values, and the values
used by journalists to prioritise one news story over another.
Firstly I looked at page 3 of ‘The Guardian’ on which I saw a big
photographic image of Prince Harry. This article was titled ‘Teacher
taped Harry to prove he cheated at art AS Level’. The article informs
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.
In the movie The Music Man con man Harold Hill, adeptly tricks the townspeople of River City, a small town in Iowa, into believing that they are need of a boy’s band. In the song “You Got Trouble,” he uses three types of propaganda to achieve this end: faulty cause and effect, exigency, and name-calling.
The news agency has been known to be moderate to extremely liberal on many occasions. The network does this by using strong, or emotional wording in hopes of influencing the public on liberal agenda. They often do not report on any damaging or controversial behavior involving the liberal causes. On the other hand share no remorse on sharing detrimental stories for the conservative ideologies.
While Capitalism might first be seen as a positive influence on free and open access to information, in fact, it can also have a detrimental impact. Inaccurate news stories, sensationalized material, and manipulation through the media are all repercussions of the effects of capitalism. Capitalism’s influence in the media skews content in favour of the market, preventing the public from access to democratic, objective news content. Too often, capitalist influence dominates the media market through conglomerate control, structured by the ever-growing desire to gain capital, treating the audience as a commodity regardless of the negative repercussions that ensue. As opposed to presenting balanced, unbiased issues that are relevant and open to the interpretation of the media consumers in order to best meet the needs of society, the result is a cycle of information that does not broaden public democratic discourse, but channels it with bias.
So called “opinion journalism” has become a growing issue in today’s media. The concern is that the news channels are not always reporting facts to their viewers, but often times fact less opinions. In his article “The Truth about TV News”, Westin makes a highly effective argument as to how news channels are reporting opinions rather than cold, hard facts. His persuading argument lists supporting and personal experience. The experience comes from Westin’s time as ABC president has given him a valuable insight into both the industry of reporting and how opinion journalism has become a growing issue. Westin uses his knowledge to support his claim: opinion journalism is bad and needs to be put to rest as fast as possible.
...rs must report on the side of their financial backers. Newspapers and nightly news shows tend not have the bi-partisan qualities that they claim to have.
GateKeeping is the control over the selection of content treated by the media usually thought to be in the hands of a few news editors who act as guardians of the information. Basically they are the people who determine the stories and information we get to hear. I would say that the gatekeeper at Fox News is Rupert Murdoch and his team because he is the founder at Fox News and he owns so much of the media that his team has to be the one making the calls on what type of news they want to talk about. The film shows gatekeeping in the works when they show the memos that Fox News sends out discussing what the anchors are and aren't allowed to talk about and how they should talk about certain topics. For example when one of the memos stated “Let’s refer to the U.S Marines we see in the foregrounds as “sharpshooters” not snipers, which carries a negative connotation" That right there shows how they manipulate the words they say to get the information to come out exactly how they want the viewers to perceive it just by changing one word. By doing things like that it twists all the facts and gives people the wrong idea
It is interesting to think that the news is not only used to portray information to viewers, but does so in a way that will benefit one political party over another. As mentioned by Thomas E. Patterson, in We The People: A Concise Intro to American Politics, “the news media are America's window into the world of politics” (Patterson, 322). Nevertheless, whether it's newspapers, news broadcasts, or internet media, news media plays a vital role of agenda setting and issue framing of American politics on a daily basis.
Wolper, Allan. “Ethics Corner: Did Critical Media Send Dean Packing?” Editor & Publisher March 2004: 25.
An argument can be made that Journalism is one of the very few professions in the world of media that is handled with some sort of dignity and pride. After reading “The Elements of Journalism” by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, I realized how important journalism is to each and every one of us. Whether you’re a writer or a reader, the back and forth exchange between provider and consumer is extremely important in pushing society forward. Journalism after all is designed to challenge society, promote new ideas and spark conversation between one another. Despite the positives of journalism, there are issues that exist within the profession that cannot be excused and cannot be ignored.
In contrast to the layout of ‘The Sun’, ‘The Times’ puts this story on page three because it does not think it is newsworthy for the front-page and its style of readers. ‘The Times’ also has a smaller e-fit picture than ‘The Sun’, it is made up of two columns both of which have small paragraphs...
"Journalism Ethics Online Journalism Ethics Gatekeeping." Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .
The media has always played an influential role in our society. Starting centuries ago with newspapers and flyers, the news media has been the primary source for society to share and learn about important events. It has the ability, especially with today’s technical advances, to get information to large numbers of people quickly and efficiently, therefore having the potential for great influential power. However, the information disseminated isn’t always accurate for various reasons to include personal agendas and governmental pressures. Instead of assisting in fully informing society, the media has frequently caused society to be ill-informed and unknowingly ignorant to many events and situations. Through media censorship, misinformation,
Most human beings have a sense of curiosity about learning what’s happening in the world around them. In order to attain this knowledge, visual prowess is relied heavily to analyze mediums, in order to understand incidents occurring all over the globe. With the assistance of evolution in technology, the media, specifically journalism, has become an essential medium through which knowledge is attained. Photojournalism is a type of journalism that plays an important role in conveying the message of a news event to the public. However, most people believe that photographs presented as medium to gain knowledge are a “transparent window on the world, capturing reality through a camera lens”, (Schwartz 2012). But in fact, most knowledge trying to
First thing that I want to say is that this essay is not one of the greatest things that I wrote. For the title, I wanted it to sound really eye grabbing and interesting, so I called my essay “A Fault In Our News”. This was based off of a famous book called “The Fault In Our Stars”. Since I found out that the title is not an academic title, I followed the revision guide and I made the revised essay title to “Fake News: Manipulation of Public Opinion”. After writing the title, I worked on introducing the essay. In both essays, I introduce the it with a story of my mom watching a fake video that she thinks is real. In the original essay, I ended the lead-in abruptly. It sounded kind of awkward, so in the revised essay I added a smoother transition