The Impact of Media Elites and Liberal Bias on the Role of a Watchdog - Coursework Example

American Journalism Journalism has been used over the years to inform the people on their rights and theactions that they need to take in order to rise upon an approaching enemy. This role has been changed in the recent past with the same having been diluted by the individuals who are in it solely for the financial gain and not as a means of ensuring that the people get enlightened and informed. To address this topic it is important to understand the roles of journalism in a democratic state and in a region where the journalists have the freedom to air their views on various issues without being intimidated, threatened or cajoled. One of the major roles that is played by journalism is acting as political watchdogs. In a given state, the people who have assumed power use that as a chance to squander public resources and hide it while they are in power. This can go unnoticed if the journalists working in such a society are biased or are manipulated while airing such information. This is the major reason why the media and journalists have found themselves at loggerheads with various governments for pointing out the flaws in the leaders as they try to fill their already full bellies. In America, just as in any other country in the past, journalism was practiced by individuals who were activists and who were determined to point out the wrongs that were going on in the society. This role as the society’s watchdog made the field famous yet feared. Journalists often disappeared without trace due to their staunch stands mainly on political grounds when it comes to ensuring that they make the people understand the dynamics of engaging in a given practice. Journalism has therefore set a good tradition in the United States and it was a major tool in the development of the country to the world power it is today. During the American Revolution, and in the years that followed, journalism played the role of uniting the people and reminding them of the goals they had to achieve as a country and the need to remain united. This yielded on well with the citizens upholding peace and unity as the country achieved new economical heights. This is still partially enjoyed today though the country has experienced a period when journalism has lost its flare and the major goal which was to act as political watchdogs has been taken up by comedy and entertainment. Decline in the Audience’s Trust towards the Media In the past, the media was highly trusted and the information they gave was taken seriously. However, currently the same has changed. There are many factors that have led to the change in turn of events and the lost trust. First, the popularity of the internet has affected how people rely on the journalists to get the information. Nowadays, all one has to do to get the information as it unfolds is have a reliable internet connection. The social media forums such as Facebook, twitter and others have made it easy and more accessible how people get the information. This way one ends up having little time to follow the information from the media houses as it used to be in the past. Another thing that has been seen and that has facilitated the mistrust in the news and role played by the journalists is their biasness while reporting. Media coverage has been changed and made so capitalistic. For a story to get covered or receive the media coverage that is required one has to bow and honor the requests of the media houses. The same media is biased when it comes to promoting certain political aspirants. They always support the people whom they think will pose the least threat to their work. They also consider the person who will cough more money and finance their campaigns. This inequality has left the people with little trust to the media and weighing between options of where to get their information. It is pathetic seeing the media openly discouraging the public from voting in a given individual with their orchestrated lies that are meant to boost the campaigns of another aspirant. The media was supposed to be the peoples’ watchdog. Their failure to uncover the atrocities done by their favorite leaders to avoid creating a rift and maybe injure an economic source has left the media to be so unreliable. When the close relations break, the same media will come up with theories that are hard to believe showing their inapt behavior of supporting those who support them. Adopted from Research Center 2012. Looking at the graph, it shows an acute rise in the way people are getting information from the internet and mobile devices. This has been promoted by the invention of the internet that has worked to change the way people accessed information and news. The number of people listening to radio has continued dwindling. This can be explained by the little time one has to listen to the radio. In the past one listened to get some entertainment and also be informed. Today one can get the entertainment somewhere else and most of the time one is on the social sites getting the information as it unfolds and therefore does not need to have a radio or switch on to the radio to get the information. The Television has not been affected a lot due to the fact that it offers better entertainment in between the news. It has also adopted well and the great variety of TV channels is just amazing. One can switch between soccer and comedy and still catch up with a news bulletin at CNN or Al Jazeera. Reading of newspapers has become a thing of the past. Before the newspapers are even printed, the people already have all the information and so they do not need a repeat. Online newspapers are also available at a price far below the printed ones. On top of this, most of the information that one gets in the newspapers is biased and the columns are written by opinionated editors who are either serving their own interests or the interest of a minor group of individuals. Readers therefore opt out of reading that and on the contrary follow up with more appealing and interesting news from the various social sites indicated above such as Facebook and Twitter. Media elites did a performed a great role to define the media we have today. It would be inappropriate to talk about media elites without mentioning Eric Alterman. Eric has written various books on media biasness. The books include What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News which came to hit the book stores in 2003. According to Russell on his commentary of Altermen’s work, he claims that Alterman has been branded the most honest and incisive media critic due to his well-articulated use of language that he uses to point out at the flaws and limitations of today’s media. In his talking about a liberal media, Eric is fast to note that the media are not liberal but a conservative group that is not so ready to accommodate news ideas (Alterman, 2003). This has been complicated by the fact that the media is left with few options if they are against a given policy. They can decide to fight it openly or decide to fight against it silently. One of the major flaws seen in media reporting has come in the analysis and presentation of political opinion polls. The polls have been known to give an advantage to one of the competitors. This has reduced the peoples’ trust on the media as the imposition and political witch hunt should not be part of media’s mandate. Pointing out on the flaws and biasness of the media by liberal thinkers such as Eric have greatly impacted the way the media does their job and changed the peoples’ perception towards it. The people are now enlightened and they do not blindly subscribe to ideologies without questioning the integrity of their source. As the president of the United States, George Bush used the media to shape public opinion and hide the truth on the 9/11 attack and the war on Iraq. The war on Iraq was declared on March 19, 2003. This came barely one and a half years after the bomb attacks on US on the 9/11 attack. After the attack, the US citizens were united against a common enemy-terrorism (Mills, 2004). Bush therefore knew that by branding the Iraq war an extended war against terrorism, he would get the majority support and the questioning of his activity would be minimal (Kushner & Gershkoff, p. 525). In the speeches made by the president and the officials in regard to the war on Iraq, they always made a link between the attack on World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the War on Iraq 18 months later. This overwhelmingly earned Bush the majority support and the activities of the military on Iraq went unquestioned. The US media has resorted to the use of propaganda on various occasions due to the knowledge that any word that is uttered during such a time can have an irreversible damage on the peoples’ perception and the media house would be made accountable. The major tactic that is used is mixing propaganda and semantics and the people won’t detect any flaw in the information and end up believing it. The models of propaganda assume the following elements that define how much the information will be distorted and the reason why it will be manipulated. The first element is the target deception which is defined as the target on which the information has to be changed. The second is the medium of delivering the message. This is chosen in a manner that most of the people targeted will get the information. The use of the media comes in here since it is known that if one uses say the television to air some views on a popular television, most people will end up getting the information no matter how flawed it will be. The mission will therefore be accomplished. The third element is the purpose of the alteration. Why is it important to change the truth or hinder the people from getting the truth? This is mainly done to shape public opinion. The peoples’ perception is important as it will define the voting trend and so the people in leadership have to ensure that it is maintained as clean as possible. The fourth element is the truth. This is what is being concealed. It is mainly the painful truth that may hold a given motive that the public should not know. The media therefore succeeds in blackmailing the public and being an agent of delivering false information instead of acting as the public’s watchdog. Walter Lippmann famously wrote that journalism was an instrument of public purpose, and effort to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make picture of reality on which men can act. The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing. The news media help us to define our communities, create common language, and identify common goal, heroes, and enemies. Most importantly it serves a watchdog, pushes people beyond complacencies, and offers a voice to the forgotten. However these developments were the results of moves by the companies that own the news media, which figured out that they could make more money by gutting, warping, and then abandoning journalism. During World War II President Roosevelt attacked the now United Nations and this made his popularity to run on an all-time high. This shows how powerful the media can be in populating a person. If they work on the opposite, the effects are far reaching. In conclusion, it is right to say that truth is no longer the heart of journalism. The field has been commercialized and the rush is on quenching personal interests rather than acting as the public watchdog. According to Raglinen (2010), some of the great journalists who deserve mentioning when it comes to the root of American journalism include Boston Gazette’s Benjamin Edes and Peter Timothy of the South Carolina Gazette just to mention a few. Work Cited Alterman, Eric. What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Print. Kushner, Shana. & Gershkoff, Amy. Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration Rhetoric. Shaping Public Opinion. 3(3), 2005. p. 525-533. Print. Mills, Sally, L. Media Biases in Post 9/11 America: The Effect of Presidential Popularity. Ethics of Development in a Global Environment. 2004. Print. Rag, Linen. Colonial Newspapers: Unsung Heroes of the American Revolution. Available at. Russell, George. Commentary of Eric Alterman’s ‘What Liberal Media? The Truth about bias and the News. 2003. Print. Read More