Media Power, the Myth of the Mirror - Essay Example

Definitions of media have changed dramatically during the twentieth century. Today, the word media encompasses a variety of communication forms thatimpact all of our senses. The volume of media has expanded to such degree that it surrounds us and provides each of us with most of our information, about almost everything. With this expansion media has evolved into mass media in a variety of forms. With these developments, mass media has acquired power to influence almost all aspects of our daily lives. This includes the type of information we receive, the manner of its presentation, and the frequency of receipt of information. Persons with power are rather few in number and are associated with even few owners and corporations producing, directing, editing and selecting topics and issues deemed "newsworthy." Given media's extreme power to influence, study of media is most critical to understanding how political behavior is, or can be influenced. News should be logical and objective, applying every possible test to verify the data or information gathered. The journalist should constantly strive to eliminate personal feeling and preference. He or she must resist temptation to seek only the data that support his topic. There is no attempt to persuade or to prove. The journalist should elevate clear thinking and logic as well as suppress feeling and emotion in his analysis. Politics - the struggle over who gets what, when and how - is largely carried out in the mass media. The arenas of political conflict are the various media of mass communication - television, newspaper, magazines and the internet. What we know about politics comes to us largely through these media. Great power derives from the control of information. Who knows what helps to determine who gets what. The media not only provide an arena for politics; they are themselves players in the arena. The media not only report on the struggles for power in society; they are themselves participants in those struggles. The media have long been referred to as America's "fourth branch" of government - and for a good reason. Media power is concentrated in leading television networks, the nation's leading newspapers and broad circulation magazines. The reporters, anchors, editors and producers of these prestige news organizations constitute a relatively small group of people in whose hands rests the power to decide what we will know about people, events and issues. The Myth of the Mirror Media people themselves often deny that they exercise great power. They sometimes claim that they only "mirror" reality. They like to think of themselves as unbiased reporters who simply narrate happenings and transmit videotaped portrayals of people and events as they really are. Occasionally, editors or reporters or anchors will acknowledge that they make important decisions about what stories, people, events, or issues will e covered in the news, how much time or space they will be given, what visuals will be issued and what sources will be quoted. They may also occasionally acknowledge that they provide interpretations of the news and that their personal politics affects these interpretations. But whether or not editors, reporters, producers or anchors acknowledge their own power, it is clear that they do more than passively mirror reality. Government and the media are natural adversaries. Public officials have long been frustrated by the media. But the US Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of a free press anticipates this conflict between government and the media. It prohibits the government from resolving this conflict by silencing its critics. Media professionals are not neutral observers of American politics rather are active participants. They not only report events but also discover events to report, assign them political meaning, and predict their consequences. They seek to challenge government officials, debate political candidates, and define the problems of society. They see their profession as a "sacred trust" and themselves as the true voice of the people in public affairs. Deciding what is "news" and who is "newsworthy" - news making - is the most important source of media power. It is only through the media that the general public comes to know about events, personalities and issues. Media attention makes topics public, creates issues, and elevates personalities from obscurity to celebrity. Each day, editors, producers, and reporters must select from millions of events, topics and people those that will be videotaped, written about, and talked about. The media can never be a "picture of the world" because the world cannot be squeezed into the picture. The media must decide what is and what is not news. Decisions about what will be news both influence popular discussion and cue public officials about topics they must turn their attention to. Politicians cannot respond to reporters' questions by saying "I don't know". Media attention to a topic requires public officials to respond to it. Moreover, the media decide how important an issue, a person or an event is by their allocation of time and space. Topics given early placement on the newscast and several minutes of airtime or that receive front-page newspaper coverage with headlines and pictures are believed to be important by viewers and readers. Politicians' love-hate relationship with the media. They need media attention to promote themselves, their message, and their programs. They crave the exposure, the name recognition and the celebrity status that the media can confer. At the same time, they fear the attack of the media. They know the media are active players in the political game, not just passive spectators. The media seek sensational stories of sin, sexuality, corruption, and scandal in government to attract viewers and readers, and thus the media pose a constant danger to politicians. Politicians understand the power of the media to make or break their careers. The politics of the media are shaped by their economic interest. Their professional environment, and their ideological leanings. The economic interests of the media are primarily to attract and hold readers and viewers. Over one quarter of primetime television is committee to commercial advertising. Americans get more than one minute of commercials for every three minutes of news and entertainment. Television networks and commercial stations charge advertisers on the basis of audience estimates made by rating services. The economic interest of the media creates a bias toward "hype" in the selection of news, its presentation and its interpretation. To attract viewers and readers, the media bias the news toward violence, conflict, scandal, corruption, sex, scares of various sorts and the personal lives of politicians and celebrities. News is selected primarily for its emotional impact on audiences; its social, economic, or political significance is secondary to the need to capture attention. News must "touch" audiences personally, arouse emotions, and hold the interest of people with sort attention spans. Scare stories make good news, for they cause viewers to fear for their personal safety. The sex lives of politicians, once by custom off-limits to the press, are now public "affairs". Sandal and corruption among politicians, as well as selfishness and greed among business executives, are regular media themes. The media are biased toward bad news. Bad news attracts larger audiences than good news. Television news displays pervasive bias toward the negative in American life - in government, business, the military, politics, education and everywhere else. Bad news in television outnumbers good news stories by at least 3 is to 1. Good news gets little attention. The television has generally failed to report these stories, or even worse, has implied that the opposite is true. Good news - stories improved health statistics, longer life spans, better safety records, higher educational levels. The result is overwhelming bad news bias especially on television. The professional environment of reporters and editors predisposes them toward an activist style of journalism once dubbed as muckraking. Reporters today view themselves as "watchdogs" of the public trust. They see themselves in noble terms - enemies of corruption, crusaders for justice, and defenders of the disadvantaged. Their professional models are the crusading investigative reporters who expose wrongdoing in government, business, the military, and every other institution of the society - except the media. Many reporters go beyond the watchdog role and view themselves as adversaries of the government. They see it as their job to expose politicians by unmasking their disguises, debunking their claims, and piercing their rhetoric. In short, until proven otherwise, political figures of any party or persuasion are presumed to be opponents. Even on entertainment shows, politicians are usually depicted as corrupt, hypocritical, and self-seeking, and business executives as crooked, greedy and insensitive. Reporters are particularly proud of their work when it results official investigations. The media are very sensitive to charges of bias toward candidates or parties. Media people are overwhelmingly liberal and democratic but generally try to deflect charges of political bias during an election campaign by giving almost equal coverage to both parties' candidates. The media are generally more critical of front-runners that of underdogs during a campaign. A horse race loses audience interest if one horse gets too far ahead, soothe media tend to favor the underdog. Frontrunners and incumbents consistently experienced the least balanced, least favorable news coverage. During the presidential primary season, media attacks on an early favorite may result in gains for the underdog, who then becomes the new object of attack. Complaints about the fairness of media are as old as the printing press. Most early newspapers were allied with political parties; they were not expected to be fair in coverage. It was only in the early 1900s that many large newspapers broke their ties with parties and proclaimed them independent. And it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the norms of journalistic professionalism and accuracy gained widespread acceptance. The constitution protects the freedom of the press; it was not intended to guarantee fairness. The First Amendment of the United States guarantee of freedom of the press was originally designed to protect the press from government attempts to silence criticisms. What effects do the media have in public opinion and political behavior It is best to consider media effects on information and agenda setting, values and opinions, and behavior. These categories of effects are ranked by the degree of influence the media are likely to have over us. The strongest effects of media are on our information levels and societal concerns. The media also influence values and opinions, but the strength of media effects in these areas is diluted by many other influences. Finally, it is most difficult to establish the independent effect of the media on behavior. REFERENCES: Herman, Edward and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon. Kaplan, Richard. 2002. Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mindich, David T. Z. 1998. Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism. New York: New York University Press. Sanders, Karen. 2003. Ethics & Journalism. London, Sage Publications Schudson, Michael. 1978. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books. Schudson, Michael. 1997. "The Sociology of News Production." In Social Meaning of News: A Text-Reader. Dan Berkowitz, ed. Pp. 7-22. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Read More