Beware Of The Media Essay Research Paper

Beware Of The Media Essay, Research Paper

Beware of the Media

Through out the history of the United States of America, the Constitution has constantly been put challenged and tried. The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the press. The great founders of this incredible country originally created the first amendment to enable colonists to defy the British and create a new standard of living. The press in the 17th century was generally accurate and informative with little competition among journalists. However, today in the 21st century, the media has evolved into a mass of . Due to incredibly high amount of competition among journalists today, the information is usually exaggerated and slanderous in order to capture a viewing audience.

The media is everywhere you turn. You can find the media in various forms such as television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and now on the information superhighway. In the process of capturing ratings, who is the media hurting more. Is it people who are accused of a crime, such as O.J. Simpson, or is it the American public s stupidity for believing everything they hear. Limitations greatly need to placed upon the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution in regard to freedom of the press because presently the media is doing more harm than good.

The job of the media is to find the truth and tell it to the people. The media has the power to inform the public, but often the information they receive is distorted. The media has shaped our view of society and the process by which we choose our leaders, make our rules, and construct our values. The media has the power, although indirectly, to encourage people to like or hate the government. The media promotes what it believes is easiest for the public to accept, but in the process it fails to cover the issues adequately. The media can make us wiser, fuller, sure and sweeter than we are. (Orr 61) But, the media can also cloud the public s judgments, and cause confusion and disillusionment as well.

From Churchill to Hitler to the former Soviet Union, it is quite clear that radio, television and newspapers have the power to change and make history. A clear example of the power of the media was when Orson Welles made his famous radio broadcast about witnessing the landing of a spaceship full of hostile Martians. America saw that the power of the media can appeal to the public easily and cause mass hysteria (Williams 25).

Noam Chomsky, an established political thinker and magazine editor, stated in an interview in 1990:

If you follow mainstream media with great care and skepticism and approach it with the right understanding of how propaganda works, then you can learn a lot. The normal reader is fooled in to believing the propaganda that they are being fed. The media shapes and selects the events and offer their biased opinions to the mass audiences. The media modifies information to fill what they believe the public s interest is. (Szykowny 9)

The media feels that they should act as a watchdog . This causes many of the ethical problems among the media because they assume the responsibility of keeping a check on the government, by acting as governmental critics, governmental experts, etc. The media digs, probes, and snoops in governmental affairs which eventually leads the media to speculate and create rumors while they are trying to expose corruption. This watchdog attitude of the media creates the idea that the government is evil and must constantly be checked. But, according to Lisa Orr, Nobody checks the checker (63).

John Silber, a critic of the media in 1988 said:

The reporter s work should be like a pane of glass, flawlessly clear and unspotted, through which the reader might view the important events of the day. Today, the practice of personal journalism in news reporting has persistently sacrificed objectivity for entertainment and the personal gratification- and presumably the greater popularity of the reporter. The pane of glass is dirtied and distorted. Too often we see and read, not what happened or what was said, but the personal views of the fourth estate. (Orr 66)

The attempt to regulate the media came when the Fairness Doctrine was established in 1934. This doctrine was instituted to ensure that publicly owned television and radio stations would not be biased and would promote their own views. The Federal Communications Council (FCC) was established to enforce the doctrine. In 1987 under the Reagan Administration, the Fairness Doctrine was revoked. The role of the FCC changed, therefore evolving to monitor the decency of materials presented on the radio and television (Orr 77). With the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine, the window for controversial journalists was opened. Thus, America saw the emergence of two strong willed personalities- Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

The audience of Rush Limbaugh has grown considerably the over the last five years. Radio stations carrying the Limbaugh Show have increased. In restaurants, there are areas called The Rush Room where you can eat and listen to him on the radio. Limbaugh speaks his mind as he constantly puts down democrats, liberals, and anything or anyone who does not share his views. At times the information Limbaugh provides is inaccurate. For example on June 27, 1993 Limbaugh played a tape from June 21, 1993 in which Secret