Pol. sci. presentation 2

We the People: Ch. 6: The Media (Part 2)

By Rani Allan

The Rise of the New Media

• The rising diversity of online media has led to variation in the level of information. -The liberal nature of the internet can mean hate speech, unsupported rumors, and outdated data that can overrun voices. -Vigorous media can also mean that misinformation and unsupported rumors can act for objective truth as claims are extensively repeated.

• While readers of online news from dominant websites are more sophisticated than average citizens, those who get their political news from blogs are actually worse off.

• Most new media do not concede by traditional media's principle of unbiased journalism, in which both sides of an debate are addressed.

More Media Outlets Owned by Fewer Companies

• There are nearly in the U.S. 2,000 TV stations, approximately 1,400 daily newspapers, and more than 13,000 radio stations (20% of which are committed to news, talk, or public affairs).

• More than three-fourths of the daily newspapers in the U.S. are owned by large media corporations such as the Hearst, McClatchy, or Gannett corportations.

• A considerable amount of the national news issued by local newspapers is supplied by one wire service, the Associated Press. Additional reportage is provided by services run by several major newspapers, such as the New York Times.

• There are only three precisely national newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today.

• The number of news sources - those doing actual news gathering - has remained quite the same, or has fell.

• The Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch owns the Fox network, in addittion to a maltitude of radio, TV, and newspaper equities around the world, known collectively as News Corportation.

-In 2007 Murdoch won control of the Wall Street Journal.

-News Corporation controls 800 media companies in more than 50 countries and has a net worth of over $5 billion

• A small figure of huge corporations now own a wide swath of media properties, including TV networks, film studios, record companies, cable channels, and local cable providers, book publishers, magazines, and newspapers.

-Clear Channel Communications, for example, controls 850 radio stations, by far the biggest amount owned by a single company.

• As major newspapers, TV stations, and radio networks fall into fewer and fewer hands, the danger increases that politicans and citizens who consider less-popular or minority outlooks will have complications finding a public symposium. As a result, they turn to the internet to voice their views.

Agenda Setting and Selection Bias• Agenda setting is the potential of the media to bring public attention to singular issues

and problems. • Groups and forces who wish to bring their beliefs to the public in order to achieve

support must gain media coverage.• The media are businesses that look to attract the largest possible audiences by

naturally tending to report stories with dramatic or entertainment value, while giving less consideration to important stories that are less fascinating.

• The news media also conducts selection bias, focusing on one detail of an event or issue.

• Mainstreem media published only few stories ciritical to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars which have costed $3 trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

• Press avoided other controversial topics such as the U.S. government's failure to close Guantánamo Bay prison camp and the Bush tax cuts in 2001 which broadened the gap between the super rich and most other Americans.

Framing

• Framing is the media's potential to influence how the American people enact political events and results.

• Politicans give attention to choose language that declare their ideas in the most favorable light possible.

• In the 2008 election the media appeared to regard the fact that Obama was America's first significant black presidential candidate as more newsworthy than Hiliary Clinton's bid to become the first woman to be president. This extra consideration gave Obama the ability to dominate the news and bring about popular excitement for his campaign.

Priming

• Priming is a form of media effect which energizes the public to take a particular view of an event of political actor.

• When it comes to political candidates, the media has considerable influence over whether a particular individual will sustain public attention, whether a particular individual will be taken seriously as a viable challenger.

Leaked Information• Leaks are relevation of classified

information to the news media. • Leaks may come from government

officials such as lower-level officials who hope to promote what they view as their bosses' improper activities.

• For example in 2005, an undentified source leaked information concerning President Bush's underground orders authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct illicit, warrantless surveillence of suspected terrorists.

• Government officials, prominent politicans, and political activisits pursue long-term relationships with journalists, to whom they regulate priority basis in a form acceptable to them.

• New techonolgy and online media such as WikiLeaks, post leaked documents and use anonymous drop-box system so leakers cannot be found.

• Wikileaks has circulated thousands of secret government documents involving instantces of governemnt corruption, war crimes, torture at Guantánamo detention camp, and numerous embarrasing private communiqués sent by U.S. diplomants abroad.

Adversial Journalism

• Political power of the news media has grew in recent years through the rising prominence of "adversial journalism," an aggressive form of investigative journalism that attempts to expose and irritate the status quo.

• New media have ushered in a new watchdog of governmental wrongdoing. The release of confidential government documents by Wikileaks showed the world that the American governemnt and press (including the New York Times) sometimes covered up news.

Regulation• In the U.S., the government does not

control the communications networks, but it does manage the content and ownership of the broadcast media. However, the print media are essentially free from government interference.

• American radio and television are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

• Radio and TV stations must have FCC licenses.

• FCC regulation does not involve with cable TV, the Internet, or satellite radio.

Regulation of Content• The federal government has

enforced several regulations that affects the political content of radio and TV broadcasts.

Equal Time Rule; broadcasters must provide candidates for the same political office equal oportunities to disclose their messages to the public.

Right of Rebutal; individuals must be given

the opportunity to respond to personal attacks made on a radio or television broadcast.

Online Media• Some say it is impossible ro manage political content

online.• The United Nations has lately announced that access to

the Internet is a human right to indicate the significance of information technology in modern life.

• Controversy erupted in 2012 with proposed congressional legislation, referred to as SOPA and PIPA, that would have regulated content on the internet.

• In the same year the U.S. Justice Department shut down a website, Megaupload, that ran services for file storing and viewing. The owners of the Hong Kong-based company were arrested on charges of copyright infringement.

Questions

Do you completely trust the media when watching/reading/listening to news?

Any questions about the presentation?