The nation has seen wars, protests for civil rights, presidential scandals, and a plethora of other emotion evoking, attention grabbing news publications, which have become the basis of media output. According to Larry Sabato in "Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism has Transformed American Politics," the media has changed from a "lap dog to a watchdog to a junkyard dog". Turning on the t.v. to the evening news broadcast or picking up a national newspaper clearly confirms this statement. As the presidential elections near, one finds less and less information on a candidates specific plan for healthcare, the war in Iraq, economic reform policy (or lack there of), or any other key policies; rather more and more is published and broadcast about the candidate's religious affiliation, or something their pastor has said, and how relations are with their spouse.
The media serves well to uncover any hidden, dark secrets that one of the nation's leaders may be keeping, but the extent to which the media portrays the smallest of personal infractions is absurd. One must sift through a large number of stories and assumptions to find any real substance, and that is an unnecessary and burdensome endeavor. Therefore, the media as a revenue generating conglomerate is succeeding, but as an informative, trustworthy source of valued news is less than par.
1 comment:
I agree with your ideas here. The news media has definitely become motivated by things other than the pursuit of truth and finding the real story. It is indeed frustrating that you have to go to several different sources to try to paint a picture of what is really going on with a particular issue and you are lucky if you can do it even at that point. What we have to remember here is that the news media is a money driven industry just like everything else in our nation and the overall factor that they consider when reporting is “will this story and the way we report it sell?” That is why tuning in for the nightly news is often a very dark and depressing experience when you think about it. Murders, robberies, rape, homes burning down, how bad the economy is… the list of very typical news stories goes on and on and the only place where it doesn’t seem to be depressing is in the sports reports (if your team won that is), and even those are becoming tainted with drug scandal, and athletes getting arrested for breaking the law. Unfortunately, shocking and disturbing sells. People don’t feel like they need to tune in to see what’s going on if all is right with the world, but if they are worried about the next bad thing to happen, or what the next shocking revelation about some politician is, they have to listen to the news to get the answers. Unfortunately, as our society becomes more and more desensitized to these kinds of things, the media will get even worse.
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