As a student, I watch the news daily and read online articles that interest me at times. However, it may be because of my generation or maybe just the way that I was brought up but I tend to take in information as a grain of salt. I figure it’s extremely difficult for me to write any type of paper or article without in some way wording or completely expressing my thoughts on them. Newspapers and television are in turn supposed to be biased, it’s their job right?
Now as I sat in my communication tutorial the article for that week was “Information Deprivation in an Information-Rich Society.” (Gerniner et al, 1996) Having done the readings I found them very interesting to understand that large corporations are basically dictating and manipulating the media outlets in which I watch on a daily business. With this article, one thought came to mind. Fox News Vs. Barak Obama.
The United States has seen major change within the last couple of years; Barak Obama is now president, first ever black president. I noticed watching the View a couple of days earlier that Bill O’Reilly was on discussing how Fox News had been seemingly attacking the President on all aspects of his term so far from his family, his religion, his beliefs and even to the colour of his skin. So I went on youtube to find some of the news reports that they were discussing and found a collage of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms
Now Fox News is known to all as a Republican network so it comes to no surprise that the news that they are broadcasting and the specialists that they are inviting onto discuss issues are all anti-Obama Republicans. It was even escalated to a point in which Fox was making up stories about Obama being Muslim and comparing him to Osama Bin Laden, a famous terrorist which many Americans are familiar with his infamous name. They were able to create great controversy about the fact of his smoking habits as well as the significance of his middle name.
The funding that is placed into the Fox network is all Republican based so it seems that they will go to any lengths to avoid being objective when it comes to voicing opinions about the President.
So basically the only positive thing that I can say about Fox News is that they aren't trying to hide their biases in any way, however it worries me that others are not as critical to hearing everything that is being said on these programs to the point in which they are transfering their own beliefs about the President.
However are marketers and advertisers just manipulating information for us to swallow and be able to be believe? In the article posted by Dr. Sevigny entitled "Green suasion or mind control? Officials hoping to stem emissions are getting their message massaged by psychologists. Can manipulating media be justified when some people feel its for the greater good of everyone as a whole?(Porter, The Toronto Star) Now some may refer to The Toronto Star as more of a liberal paper, and the ideas about global warming to be a liberal thought, so are they manipulating information in order for people to make a change in their beliefs? Whether you want to believe it or not, something is changing in the environment, call it what you want, global warming, global changeing, but should these same manipulations be categorized as the same manipulations as Fox's news coverage on Obama?
Personally, I think your comparing apples and oranges. Fox is trying to destroy the image of a single person, where in turn psychologists are simply manipulating ideas about conserving the earth to the masses for the greater good.
No comments:
Post a Comment