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Many dissimilar types of communicating tools, such as the TV, cinema, radio, newsprints and magazines, web websites and the music industry, may be classified as media. An necessary issue relating American media is the conception of “concentration of media ownership”. This conception implies that the ownership of most of America’s media lay in the hands of a few media conglomerates, who both earn huge sums of cash through advert and sale of copyrighted material, and, at the same time, are considered as important global players, regarding the fact that they influence people’s views when it comes to their surrounding world to a big extent. But on the other hand, numerous argue that rather of being powerful players, the American media are in fact tools in the hands of the government. In this paper, each theory will be investigated to see which one better describes the role of media in both the American society and likewise the world. It is claimed that there is no more inviolable power in the world than the American public opinion, and this public opinion is itself shaped by the media, so media may be regarded as taking the place of the powerful kings and popes of the past centuries (National Vanguard Books, 2004). There are some dissimilar ways through which media cautiously shapes people’s opinions. It provides it is audience with an effigy of the world, and then tells them what and how to think when it comes to that image. By stereotyping, the media likewise tell persons how to think and judge when it comes to others (this others may refer to dissimilar races, women…). The media also plays it is role by concentrating on sure stories and issues, while omitting others. Among other communicating media, the television is the most influential, with regards to the fact that persons spend a lot of time observing TV, in all probability much more than they spend on other media, such as the cinema or newspapers. According to a survey by Mediamark Research, 98% of Americans have a television, while only 79% are newspaper readers. Three examples of how public sentiment is shaped by American media are: - middle east news, and how the Arab-Israeli conflict is portrayed The government has always declared the media to be a power that doesn’t always act in the right way. The conservatives have always complained that the US media have been unpatriotic and not supportive of government’s alien policy, or merely too liberal. The Media Research Center has carried out a study on the role of media on the war on terror, from such a conservative viewpoint. The report gives examples of why the American media have not reported the war and relating issues in the rectify way: - Peter Jennings of ABC, in a live program 2 days after the 9/11 attacks stated: “the US might no longer be a free country” and he likewise claimed that civil liberties have been suspended in the country. There are other studies that have applied the war on terror to conclude that the media in America have been independent players, and not controlled by the government. Jim Kuypers is a political communication researcher who claims that the mainstream media deliberately reflected the speeches of President Bush in a biased manner. Kuyper claims that “if someone were relying only on the mainstream media for information, they would have no idea what the president genuinely said. It was as if the press were reporting on a dissimilar speech.” He concludes the US media to be an “anti-democratic institution”. (Kuypers, 2006) Other writers have claimed that the media have concentrated too much on the government’s failures and weaknesses for the duration of the war. (Lustick, 2006) Opposing this “media as power” theory which portrays the US media as an independent power, calls it the “Fourth Estate”, and claims that journalists are more influential than any government official in setting the public (and on occasion foreign) agenda, are the “media as tool” advocates. Two primary points helps grasp why the media are referred to as a tool: - the media is dependant on the government for the selective information that it may obtain, and that it may call credible These facts are said to turn the media into a public relations arm of the US government. (Edward, 1993) Again, the war on terror would be an interesting context in which the role of media may be studied, this time with the “media as tool” viewpoint. The conception of “embedded journalism” appeared for the duration of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and proved to be a good way to keep reporters content and controlled at the same time. The media put pressure on the government to grant them better access to battlegrounds; they were not pleased with the way they were shut down from data in case of Afghanistan, and also the way they were censored in the Gulf War. And pentagon made the best out of all this, as Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps put it: “Frankly, our occupation is to win the war. Part of that is info warfare. So we are going to undertake to dominate the selective information environment.” (Kahn, 2004) In this project, reporters signed contracts with the military which fixed what they were permitted to report. Reporters were embedded in chosen military units, and so shared their daily lives with soldiers, and relied on them to get them to the place they wanted, and they normally didn’t have access to any other source other than the military. A Penn State study reveals that this project did affect the number and the type of stories that were published by major newspapers, and the result was that more articles with regards to the U.S. soldiers’ personal lives and less ones when it comes to the affect of the war on Iraqi civilians were printed in the 754 news articles that were analyzed in this study. (Linder, 2006) It may be concluded that the media may receive pleasure from a sure degree of independence, provided that they don’t cross sure red lines, and stay faithful to sure notions that are primary to the US government. American media is not just a “power” or a “tool”, but a powerful tool that may be employed in a very affective way by the government, if only they may come up with clever ideas and projects, like the “embedded journalism” project. In the “Information Age” (Hess and Kalb, 2003), tactics like hiding the whole story or direct censoring will surely be ineffective. The US government surely will valuate it is “embedding strategy” and might come up with new and innovative ideas in order to reflect issues and events in it is own way, and stay in control of this powerful soft tool. Bibliography: 8. Research staff of National Vanguard Books, Who Rules America? The Alien Grip Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken, November 2004 |
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