How does the News effect our Views
Caroline Kelly - Melanie Konesky - Anthony Lowe - Ryan Malone
Rebecca Lee - Leader
Abbie Kuhlman - Editor
Jason Kruder - Web Designer
Introduction
At some point during the day whether it’s when you wake up in the morning, on your lunch break, or just before bedtime it is almost certain you will catch a glimpse of the news. It has become a vital part of our country’s daily lives, it is important to take the time to realize not all news media coverage can be relied upon as complete facts. Many newscasts today are skewed due to aspects such as omission, selection, story placements, and word choice. However, even larger biases take place regularly in the news. These powerful prejudice stem from four major components of the news: government, business, media, and consumers. Here is a closer look at how the aspects of media affect the way we view our news.
Influence within the Media
Rebecca
Lee
Many factors exist within the media industry that contribute to biased reports and skewed coverage of stories. These factors exist throughout the entire structure of the media, from the number of corporations who control the market, to the influence from the owners of the businesses, to the way the news is reported. However, these aspects of the media industry do not ultimately ensure that bias will occur and they are certainly not to blame. Bias can only be accounted for as a human flaw, not a structural flaw. These features merely instigate, not determine the incidence of bias.
Mainstream media
exists in the
Furthermore, media owners find ways to make their issues and interests known to editors and producers, thereby pressuring journalists to shape coverage. Thus, reporters are subtly, not directly influenced by media officials. According to the website for the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the pressure to skew news coverage “involves cutbacks, buyouts, focusing journalists around the bottom line, tying journalists’ income to business incentives, creating a commercial rather that journalist mindset in the news room” (Committee of Concerned Journalists). One reason media owners may push for biased coverage is because many serve on the board of other corporations such as investment or technology companies and they are looking to promote not only their interests of the media company but also the interests of the other company as well. Similarly, many media companies work to shape coverage to benefit the advertisers that support their network. But by avoiding certain stories in fear of offending of their advertisers, networks may miss out on important issues involving corporate practices. An organization known as Fair and Accuracy in Reporting shows on their website a poll in 2000 from the Pew Center for the People and the Press that found that out of 287 reporters, editors, and news reporters, 61 percent believed their corporate owners exercised a moderate amount of influence on what was reported and 41 percent said they themselves had discouraged stories or lightened their tone in order to benefit the interests of their company (FAIR).
Moreover, journalists may exercise bias in the way that news is reported.
A good example of such bias is the under-representation of different races,
genders, and
sexualities in the newsroom. The website for FAIR notes that in a
40-month survey of NBC’s Nightline news show, guests were 92% caucasian and
89% male (FAIR). Reporters can also be biased if false assumptions or
correlations are made in the report. As an example, a news story concerning a
rape trial may discuss the sexual history of the woman, even though it is
irrelevant, thereby distorting her credibility. Yet another way in which
journalists can use bias in reporting is through loaded language and word choice
(FAIR). Even in something as simple as the description of a car accident, bias
may exist. In saying that the semi-truck “crashed” into the car makes the
accident sound worse than if the semi-truck had just “hit” the car.
How Business Affects the Media
The influence of the news over our perceptions of global and domestic society is so powerful that any attempt to commit its extent to description seems incredible. The news is our only means of observing world events outside of our own communities. This idea that the news is our only informer of all that is outside of our personal experience is important because the news can, and must, color and filter world events to suit its needs for capital gain. This should probably be keeping us up at night, but we want strife that works out in a half hour, like on a sitcom, and if it doesn’t, they can always end with the sports or make a hero out of someone involved. As consumers, we owe it to ourselves to know what influence these businesses that govern over our perceptions are having on news media, and thus, on our minds.
The news, just like any show on television, is
trying to make money by appealing to the masses. It is, then, hard for a news
program to be proactive, and deliver pure truth, because the truth, as reported
in the cliché one-liner delivered monotonously in the prime time haze of
“must see T.V.”, hurts. According to the lectures of Dr. Louisa Ha, at
Bowling Green State University, the purpose of U.S. broadcasting is to
“deliver consumers to sponsors”. News programs are required to sell products
to viewers or lose their advertising income from an unhappy sponsor. Dr. Ha
continued to say that the actual T.V. programming is simply “bait for the
consumer”. This is a bleak, but true, statement. It speaks of the kind of
power held by the mighty capitalist advertising dollar, and the passive
aggression realized by a laissez-faire capitalist government that turns control
of information over to its richest constituents: the CEOs with seemingly
unlimited power. All of this is in exchange for our comfort in the fact that our
government has its hands off of our personal lives.
Financially supporting the programs on television gives corporations power over content. If the show being aired does not please the sponsor, the threat of pulling ads (and money, you see) can loom heavily over a T.V. station. Recent shows pulled off the air due to lack of sponsorship include “My So Called Life”, ”Freaks and Geeks”, and Ted Kopel’s show (in favor of Letterman’s fun, but worthless fodder). All of these were examples of critically acclaimed (popular with viewers and critics), excellent programming that appealed to their respective audiences. But, the sponsors weren’t happy so the shows got cancelled.
Sponsors aren’t going to be able to cause
cancellation of the evening’s local news, but they can certainly change its
content. In one recent study by Leung and Strange, it was determined that the
news, because of its allegiance to Big Business, portrays poverty, almost
always, as the fault of lazy individuals, rather than as an unavoidable
by-product of our culture and economy. “When news presentations frame poverty
as a particular instance of a poor person, responsibility is assigned to that
individual. Such episodic stories evoke individualistic attributions of
responsibility for the societal-level problem exemplified in the account”
(Leung, Strange 1999). The news is careful not to call attention to societal
problems if those problems are bettering the position of sponsors. These issues
and social problems are so delicate that news organizations are beginning to
avoid them altogether. The news is generally a “feel-good” place, now, even
in the midst of war. According to David Brindle, an author and prominent
researcher, “The most disturbing trends in recent years are the movement away
from hard news toward emphasis on the arts, lifestyles, and consumer issues as
well as the increasing influence of government spin doctors, which makes it very
difficult for journalists to do anything but follow the line” (Brindle 1999).
The news is there to advertise and entertain. It is the servant of the large
corporations and the rich people that run them. The news you are hearing is
doctored at the whim of the wealthy.
Because large corporations are paying for the air of news programs, they possess influence over news shows’ content. These businesses are not going to allow an unbiased report of issues that would affect their business. Measuring the precise ways that these businesses are affecting the news is almost impossible due to the myriad ways in which news is filtered, but we can observe for ourselves what things are or are not receiving coverage. These major issues that go unreported, could cause great pain to some of the U.S.’s major markets and biggest corporations. Why would the newscasters pass on these issues? In the answer, if you can get one, is where you will find the parameters of the vast oceans of influence held by corporations over the news
The Role of Consumers
Ryan Malone
This articles examines how media effects and influences the consumers in our society. My research is based mainly upon the Journal of Business Ethics. This Journal discusses how the media is a tool for the sale of goods to consumers.
The journal discusses four major dilemmas:
1) Privacy Dilemma
2) Intellectual Property Rights Dilemma
3) Right-to-Know Dilemma
4) and the Value or Valuation Dilemma
These four dilemmas examine the privacy of the consumers, information about certain products that consumers should know about, and the customer value. The reason the Journal discussed these topics is to show that a lot of the time consumers are not shown hard facts about certain products. The media plays a huge role in these situation because the media advertises these products for the web.
One
of the major problems that the Journal discussed is the privacy that the
customers have while shopping on the internet. The problem is that consumers do
not know who is tracking their personal information such as their social
security number, or credit card number. The media basically advertises the goods
or products the way the company tells them to without telling the consumers the
ins and outs.
The media needs to focus on the consumer as their top priority and give them all the information that they need to know about the good or product that they are purchasing. Also be truthful to the consumer, the media has to provide the proper information to the consumer, because this is how most consumers make bad purchases.
In conclusion, this examines how the media is biased to the consumers because of the privacy and the lack of information that they provide to the consumers. Hopefully, in the future this will change but that is highly unlikely.
The Government & Media Bias
Caroline Kelly and Melanie Konesky
Everyone knows that journalists are "supposed" to be unbiased in their
reporting of the news, but is this actually true? According to famous journalist
Walter Cronkite, "Everybody knows that there's...a heavy liberal persuasion
amongst correspondents." And why? Statistically, polls have shown many
times that the vast majority of journalists vote for Democrats, even thought the
country seems to be split evenly between both Democratic and Republican Parties.
does this mean that whether Americans are aware of it or not, they are,
regardless of their political affiliation, being "brainwashed" into
Democratic ideologies in the news?
Journalists often times hold more liberal views, especially when topics of
morality versus government power are at stake, for example, Abortion, gun
control, and 
homosexuality. According to a Media Bias website, Free-Market.Net,
"Reporters might once have been adherents of political views ranging across
the spectrum...with people calling the shots at an alphabet soup of regulatory
and law-enforcement agencies, it could be relatively difficult for reporters to
think of government as something misguided or dangerous." In the past, news
operations in the U.S. typically stuck to one point of view or another. The
measure of a good newspaper, for example, was not whether or not it was
unbiased, but rather it was thorough and accurate in its coverage. Readers would
read the articles and decide for themselves what their opinion was. Luckily
there are ways for readers to detect bias in the news according to the website
cyberpod.com/media3.htm "How to Detect Bias in the News. This website gives
readers 6 ways to detect media bias. 1. Bias through selection and omission 2.
Bias through placement3. Bias by headline 4. Bias by photos, captions and camera
angles 5. Bias through use of names and titles 6. Bias by choice of words (http://www.cyberpod.com/media3.htm).
If the reader looks for these things in their news broadcast or in the
newspaper, they can be more aware of influence and attitude from the
interviewer, writer, photographer and editor. It just seems more are more that
news anchors are putting in their "two cents".
While today's media, whether it is the television, radio, newspaper, et cetera,
claim to present Americans with objective coverage of newsworthy events, there
are journalists so often with the one mind on the issues of the day, that the
"objective" coverage turns out to be so filtered as a result of their
view of the world. In a perfect world, news coverage that remained free from
personal opinions of those presenting the news is most likely an impossible
goal. Imagine if Bill O'Reilly, with his emotionally charged commentaries on
everything from George Bush's
mispronunciation of words to Rosie O'Donnell being gay, didn't exist. Or imagine
Shepard Smith, Tucker Carlson, and countless other journalists who broadcast
their opinions, whether it is fuel for debate, or get their point across and
hope others feel the same on an issue - news would be pretty boring, wouldn't
it?
Conclusion
Influence in the news is everywhere. It comes comes from business through advertising, government through policy control, and the media itself through control over what and how they present in a news story. All of these influences are forced on the consumer. Most viewers are not aware of the far-reaching bias in reporting, however, as a critical observer you should now be aware of the partiality that can occur behind the scenes and view the news in a well-informed manner.
Works Cited
Global Issues (2002, February 20). Corporate Influence in
the Media. Retrieved
FAIR (2001, February 12). The Boss’s Business. Retrieved
FAIR (2001, February 12). How to Detect Bias In News Media.
Retrieved
Committee of Concerned Journalists (1999, March 30). A National Survey of Journalists.
Brindle,
David. (1999). Media Coverage of Social Policy: A Journalist’s Perspective.
Ha, Louisa. (2000). Lecture on Broadcast Networks. TCOM 103 Media/Information Society.
Leung, J.J., and Strange, C. (1999). How anecdotal accounts in news and fiction can influence judgments of a
social problem’s urgency, causes, and cures. Personality and Self-Change Bulletin 25(4) 436-449.
Shoaf, Victoria(2002). Ethics on the Web: Applying Moral Decision-making to the new media. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-11