What The Media Does Well
Media Falling Into a State of Automaticity
- Convenient source of information
- Interesting
- Holds attention
- Provides an educational platform
- Provides some critical analysis of news
Choose Your News
- News networks being heavily influenced by bias
- The media tends to accept certain stereotypes, biases, and opinions
- Shows that ratings and viewers are chief concern not the Truth
- Failure to report accurately is failure of the media in doing its job
- Regular news with no fillers, strictly facts, no speculation
- Fair and unbiased information delivered on a weekly basis
- After the news is over, the viewers will say which topic they want to see debated
- That topic will then be debated in a semi game show type of way
- Debaters call for a fact check or guest star phone in or come to stage
- To cater to the college setting, professors will be fact checkers
- Moderators will be news anchors so they can moderate while giving narrative
Media Bias
Media Pitfalls
Speculation in the News
News channels and political analysts for the channels focus on being biased and destroying the opposite party instead of calmly handling tasks at hand, together as a team, working with differences. The differences between the parties could actually be turned into a positive by using each’s strengths. This is a largely relevant issue in the media.
Focus on Perpetrators Rather than Victims
-Disappeared on March 8th
- Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew
- Search originally began in Gulf of Thailand and continued to grow
-CNN ran 24/7 news coverage for over a month after incident
-Within first week CNN's prime time viewers doubled. (NYTimes)
-Pew Research Center conducted a survey that concluded 33% of US citizens followed news about the flight over Fort Hood shooting, Ukraine Crisis and The Obama healthcare over haul. (CBS.com)
-Remained top 3 story Google for over a month and a half
-You all know of: Adam Lanza, Timothy McVeigh, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev
-Do you remember any of the victims of the OK city bombing?
-What about those from the Sandy Hook shooting?
-These are the pictures that should have gone viral.
- Many do it for the infamy.
-Others do it to get their ideologies out there, and the media attention accomplishes that goal.
Corporate Influence
Sports News
I. Focusing on Major Sports
a. Sports news networks mostly focus on the major sports (football, basketball, soccer and baseball).
b. If you watch the SC Top Plays almost all of the highlights come from those 4 major sports.
c. They do not give other minor sports as much attention as they do to the others.
i. These sports might include golf, tennis, bowling, or hockey
II. Overhyping the News
a. One thing that ESPN hyped up happened earlier this year is when LeBron James, Basketball player for the Miami Heat, scored 61 points in a game.
i. Each time the topic was brought up the next day, sports reporters spent more than 10 minutes each time talking about this event.
ii. On the left side of the screen, while sports center is airing, they usually have a short list of what topics are going to be talked about next. The day after James scored his 61 points, this is what it looked like. They were over covering the story, scoring 61 is not a rare occurrence.
b. Another hyped story was when Jason Collins came out as gay.
i. At the time he was a free agent but since his news the Brooklyn Nets have signed him.
ii. This story was huge because Collins is the first openly gay athlete in a major American sport.
Media Plays on Fear
Peter Biancamano, Daniella Giambattista, Joe Balkaran, James Recine, Chris Crain, Cecelia Henry
-Arizona State University Professor David Altheide says the media drives on fear. We are made to believe the West Nile virus or a shark attack is around the corner.
-Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture speaks on the media's consumption of crime and how it constructs criminality and the social justice system.
-This example was show in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine when he pieced together news clips and all the alleged suspects were black males.
• General idea is that private sector individuals transition well to public sector roles
• Wealth
• Revolving door
-Goldman Sachs
-Other regulatory positions
• Bias in the media
• Media moguls
-Political donations
-Hiring biases
-Fall into a state of automaticity