In October 2003, the British humanitarian organization Christian Aid released a report that $4 billion in Iraqi funds, which had been earmarked for reconstruction of the country, had disappeared.
The Coalition Provision Authority (CPA), the U.S.
controlled body that ruled Iraq at the time, was relegated with handling that money.
"An examination of financial records between June 2003 and October 2004 showed poor bookkeeping, and investigators "found indicators of potential fraud," the report said" (Borenstein, Online).
At the time, the CPA vigorously denied the accusations (Millions, Online).
By June 2004, the amount of money gone missing had more than doubled from four to almost nine billion dollars.
This story was reported with minimal coverage when the announcement was first released.
As the investigation progressed, the story of the missing billions was reported several times during the summer months of 2004 and again in January 2005.
However, it was never given prominence in any news medium.
The writers at Faithful Progressive called it the "biggest and single most under-reported story of the last year" Millions, Online).
A comment on the blog said it best: "The report that documented Christian Aid's concerns was released on the day of the Iraq elections and this story kind of got lost" (Millions, Online).
The average American has no idea that this egregious mishandling of so much money ever occurred.
This is just one example of a dangerous trend in today's major news media: stories are being reported upon as deemed "newsworthy" by media executives rather than for their value as actual news.
It seems that by today's standards, stories that are entertaining, rather than informing, are given more attention by the media (Radford, 189). News Media and Democracy In a democracy such as in the United States, an informed public is of critical importance.
In matters regarding the self-interests of the citizenry and of the nation as a whole, knowledge is key in making decisions regarding participation in the process of democracy.
Indeed, "failing to report important news, or reporting news shallowly, inaccurately, or unfairly can leave people dangerously uninformed" (Downie and Kaiser, 6).
Over the history of the United States, technology has allowed information to be disseminated in an increasingly wider and more rapid manner.
Where town criers and newspapers were once the norm, innovation has brought about the huge mass media we see today, adding television, radio, and the Internet to the print media of old. The mass media of today has tremendous power within society.
What and how information is distributed can have indelible consequences for individuals and society as a whole.
As such, control of media outlets "is regarded as a valued form of property for those seeking political or economic power" (Graber, 33).
Among other sources of power, it is important to note that mass media has the ability to: "attract and direct attention to problems, solutions, or people that can favor those with power; it can confer status and confirm legitimacy; it can be a channel for persuasion and mobilization (Graber, 33).
This represents an incredible amount of power, and over the past twenty years or so, people have taken control over these outlets for the sole purpose of attaining both political and economic power. What is Good News?
Before examining the state of the news media in today's society, it is important to define what good reporting of news should be.
Doris A.
Graber, in her book Media Power in Politics, thinks it important to distinguish between news and truth.
"The function of news is to signalize an event.
The function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality upon which men can act" (Graber, 41).
News dissemination, whether through radio broadcast, newspaper articles, or a web site posting, should perform both functions in order to truly inform.
Good news can affect society in positive ways.
Determined, sweeping coverage of important topics can improve local communities, rid government of improper public officials, save lives, and so many other things (Downie and Kaiser, 4).
Reporting events and uncovering truths is critical for the news media to perform its function. The State of Today's Media In recent years, the news media has gotten far away from reporting information and digging for hidden truths.
It seems that these days, we are bombarded with stories of runaway brides, celebrity gossip and missing white women.
Indeed, Michael Jackson's molestation case got more press coverage than many major news stories of the previous year, such as the CIA Leak Investigation, the NSA Spying Scandal, or the Downing Street Memos. Today, we see so many stories and news bites and virtually no attempt at uncovering the truths that lie within many of the important stories occurring today.
News has become both sensationalized for entertainment value and skewed toward one bias or another.
As stated earlier, an agenda lies within this state, which is the attainment of economic and political power, respectively. In today's society, technology makes the transfer of information quicker than it's ever been before, and access to information has never been more readily accessible.
"A third of Americans below age forty cite the Internet as their main source of news" (Summary, Online).
In the United States, there are three twenty-four hour news networks.
So why does it seem that less news than ever before reaches the public?
With all this ability to transmit news so quickly, no one seems to do the necessary job of putting stories in their proper perspective. President Bill Clinton stated it well in a response to the question of the condition of today's media.
He stated, "The thing I worry about most is that people will have all the information in the world but won't have any way of evaluating it...That's what I consider to be the most significant challenge presented to all of you by the explosion of media outlets ...
in the Information Age." (Downie and Kaiser, 221). How did this all come about?
Today's news media "is controlled by economic and political forces that seek to frame the national dialogue, create the parameters for debate, and limit the spectrum of possibility for outside interests to gain access to the vast realm of psychic real estate that is the American mass consciousness" (Lappe, xix).
It was not always this way, however. What Created Today's Mass Media Mess? When people think of television news, one of the first things that come to mind is the network evening news.
Big name anchors, such as Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and others all have stellar reputations for thorough, unbiased news reporting.
Still today, the big three networks attract a bigger audience than any other news broadcast (Downie and Kaiser, 111).
These well known anchors have become household names because of how they reported the news.
In their many years of experienced reporting, emotion or personal bias never got in the way of getting the story out in a truthful, comprehensive manner.
"When Walter Cronkite passed on the news that John F.
Kennedy had died, he did it with composure and without loaded words or emotional hyperbole.
He surely felt a loss, yet he understood the need to separate himself from the news" (Radford, 147).
In trying to explain how Cronkite's manner of news casting has been made obsolete, it is important to examine how rule changes over the past twenty years or so led us to the condition we see today. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the ruling body over the media.
Before the 1980's, a FCC policy, called The Fairness Doctrine, was the rule of thumb in news broadcasting.
"The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance" (Limburg, Online).
The Fairness Doctrine required broadcast stations, both in radio and on television, to apportion time to discussions of controversial public issues in a balanced and fair manner.
Broadcasters were required to present opposing viewpoints to ensure fairness. During the early part of the 1980's, many broadcasters began lobbying the FCC to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, complaining of onerous record keeping expenditures, First Amendment rights, and other issues.
Finally, in 1984, the policy was repealed.
"Within the next six months, civic discussions on the air dropped thirty-one percent...
Diversity of opinions had begun to shrink and rights of reply disappeared from the U.S.
airwaves" (Bagdikian, 139).
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was only a precursor of what was to come in the decline of news broadcasting.
In 1996, a new law was passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton that would forever change the face of the mass media.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 abolished many cross-market barriers that had existed among communications sectors of industry.
In effect, new mergers and acquisitions among telephone companies, cable providers, newspaper conglomerates, etc., previously banned, could now take place (Messere, Online).
This law, with provisions allowing the aggregation of radio and television broadcasting, cable and telephone industries, Internet and online computer services, and telecommunications equipment manufacturing, would have a sweeping affect for years to come. The Big Five A direct result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been the consolidation of newspapers, magazines, book publishers, movie studios, Internet Service Providers, and radio and television stations into ownership by five media conglomerates.
These five corporations are Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (Based in Australia), The Walt Disney Company, Viacom, and Bertelsmann (based in Germany). In 1983, the number of companies owning media outlets numbered in the fifties.
That number has dwindled to only five today.
Ownership of virtually all media by only five global corporations is a danger to the very heart of democracy.
Even more of a danger is the fact that these media conglomerates do not operate in isolation.
They are interlocked in such a way that they have incredible power (Bagdikian, 16). "The dominant five media conglomerates have a total of one hundred forty-one joint ventures, which makes them business partners with each other.
All five join forces in one of Washington's most powerful lobbies, the National Association of Broadcasters, to achieve the laws and regulations that increase their collective power over consumers" (Bagdikian, 9). With incredible power such as this, those who run these giant organizations decide how to shape public opinion.
It cannot be stated enough that the underlying motivation of these entities is economic and political power. A Matter of Economics As with any other business, the primary goal of each corporation is profit, and this can be seen across the mass media.
Newscasts, print media, etc., are full of advertisements for other ventures within the same corporations.
In fact, "a report studying the content of major network morning shows conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that much of the content was infomercials, frequently for products of parent companies.
On average, a third of the content is devoted to selling a film, television program, book, or music CD" (Radford, 183). This trend towards self-promotion exemplifies what news has become.
Corporate executives have discovered that entertainment is what sells.
This is the reason so much time and space on 'news' programs are devoted to plugging their own products.
The casualty in all of this is of course, real news.
Another bottom-line driven action by the media conglomerates has also helped to create the dilution of news and its dissemination to the consumer.
Cost cutting within these businesses has led to increased profits and a de-emphasis on serious reporting (Downie and Kaiser, 9).
In 2001, under pressure from competing Fox News and MSNBC, CNN decided to layoff about ten percent of its workforce of 4,300 people (Downie and Kaiser, 146).
Clear Channel, the largest radio broadcast chain in the United States, runs 1,240 stations with only two hundred employees (Bagdikian, 1).
Clearly, with the dilution of news staff comes the dilution of news. News Bias? The other motivation for the driving forces in today's media is political power.
The five major media conglomerates in effect band together to influence not only factors that create profit, but also those that give them true power and reach.
In wielding their collective might, they have the ability to ultimately change the very social and political landscape of the nation. The media has long been regarded as being biased to the left, or liberal, side of the political spectrum.
Based on what is played out on the news everyday, as well as other data, this argument doesn't necessarily prove true.
In the 2000 national election, the National Association of Broadcasters made sixty-four percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans compared to only thirty-six percent to Democrats (Bagdikian, 9).
If there were truly a bias towards the left, the amounts would probably be reversed. Benjamin Radford, in his work, "Media Myth Makers," discusses what he calls "news bias." He defines news bias as that bias "inherent in the modern news-gathering process, including sensationalism, predefining news events, and selective news coverage.
The news bias distorts reporting and changes how we understand and react to the world around us" (Radford, 65). Radford makes a lot of sense when it comes to how news is not necessarily dictated by news, rather than people who want to influence what we think and how we perceive the world around us.
Whether it is political bias or Radford's news bias, it exists and is a detriment to society as a whole.
In order to make a case for political bias in the news as slanted to the right, one can compare news coverage of two negative news events revolving around our current, Republican president and our former Democratic president. In January 1998, the day after the Monica Lewinsky scandal was first reported by the Washington Post, the paper devoted "eleven articles, using contributions from at least twenty reporters, and comprising 11,844 words dedicated to allegations that the president lied about a consensual relationship" (Foser, Online).
The New York Times, the country's other widely read and respected newspaper devoted similar space to the scandal.
In contrast, on December 16, 2005, a story had broken out that President Bush had been using "the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct domestic surveillance that has been widely described as an illegal trampling of the Constitution".
The day after, the two papers gave a combined total of five articles, using twelve reporters, and totaling 6,303 words (Foser, Media, Online). Comparisons like this could go on and on, and it is clear that these stories are quite different from one another.
The Lewinsky scandal revolved around a personal situation and a public person.
Its outcome had little to do with society as a whole.
Other than pure entertainment and shock value, this extended coverage of the event served little purpose. The Pew Research Center conducted a poll in December of 1998, not long after Bill Clinton had been impeached.
The poll found that "the impeachment vote was not even among the top ten news interest stories of 1998." President Clinton's approval ratings among political adversaries had increased significantly after the impeachment (Turned, Online). The NSA spying story is quite different.
It involves serious Constitutional questions concerning privacy rights and executive power.
In April 2004, George Bush factually lied about the eavesdropping during a speech.
"'Anytime you hear the United States Government talking about wiretap, it requires a court order.' That statement is demonstrably false as the president has now admitted that he has ordered domestic wiretaps without court orders." Among all the news outlets together, this video was aired only sixteen times.
In comparison, a videotaped denial by Bill Clinton of a relationship with Monica Lewinsky had aired seventy-three times in a similar time period (Foser, Online). Clearly the two stories are quite different in terms of newsworthy importance.
One would believe that the wiretapping story of today is more critical to American society and well being than the Clinton affair, yet the resulting coverage was the opposite of what anyone living in a democracy should expect. The 2000 Election: A Preview of What Was to Come The state of the media took a turn for its present worst beginning with the 2000 Presidential election.
The election night debacle centered on the state of Florida.
The candidate receiving the electoral votes of Florida would move on to be the next President of the United States. As with all major stories, the major networks always look to be the first to broadcast the story.
This election was no different.
On this night, Florida and the election would be called for Gore, then reversed.
Next, it was declared a Bush victory.
Once again it was taken back.
The election had been statistically too close to call, yet that didn't deter the major networks from broadcasting erroneous information about the results. At around 2:00a.m., John Ellis, a cousin of George W.
Bush and senior election analyst for Fox News decided that it was "statistically impossible for Gore to win Florida." Fox decided to call Florida and the election for Bush.
Eric Boehlert of Salon.com believes this decision played a crucial role in the election.
It "created a false impression that Bush had won the general election" (Lappe, 4).
This call left the public with the perception that Bush had won and all Gore could do to fight it was just sour grapes.
Regardless of the final outcome, a media outlet played at least somewhat of a role in the outcome of an election.
Other controversial questions arose out of the Florida elections, but got very little coverage.
Pat Buchanan, a staunch conservative received over three thousand votes in a heavily Democratic county in Florida.
This fact got little attention.
Much of the coverage instead was loaded with stories of "butterfly ballots" and other irregularities with voting processes and elections.
"Ironically, the public came away from the 2000 Florida debacle with the perception that all problems in that state were the result of flawed ballots and faulty lever machines" (Lappe, 222).
This episode turned out to be only the beginning of what has come in the years since.
Throughout the history of the news media, it has always been revered that American news "takes particular pleasure in finding high officials who are lying or straying from the truth by exaggeration." This supposedly sets American media apart from the media in countries with oppressive, dictatorial regimes (Bagdikian, 77). Accountability in government office is a cornerstone of a democracy and a "crucial aspect of American national ideology" (Downie and Kaiser, 8).
Repeatedly, the news media have failed to hold the present administration accountable for their actions in matters affecting us all. The Right Fox Since the 2000 presidential election, Fox News, owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has become an increasingly powerful force in today's news media market.
"Since 2000, the number of Americans who regularly watch Fox News has increased by nearly half...while audiences for other cable outlets have been flat" (News, Online) The fact that Fox News has become increasingly popular has little to do with in-depth, honest, 'fair and balanced' reporting.
"The Fox News Channel was created in order to dominate rivals in the race for ratings, not quality.
Murdoch...created a news powerhouse that is run on opinion, vitriol, flash and attitude, but not actual news" (Kitty, 308). Indeed, the Fox News juggernaut is worthy enough of a full examination on its own.
However, for the sake of space, many of the major points behind the Fox network and how it has come to represent the current, rueful state of the media will be encapsulated here. If there were ever a case for a partisan news media, Fox would be it.
Within the viewer statistics mentioned earlier concerning Fox, the greatest gains of viewers have been among "political conservatives and Republicans" (News, Online).
One only needs to watch Fox News for an hour or so and discover why. Fox programming is highlighted by its slew of high profile news personalities with staunchly conservative viewpoints and staunchly conservative pundits filling their guest spots.
Hosts such as Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Brit Hume are all well known for their rightward slant.
These personalities, and others, fill the airwaves each and every night with conservative perspectives and the infamous Republican talking points.
These talking points are central statements put out by the Republican National Committee in response to virtually any issue in front of the public.
The idea is to present a united message among Republican members of the government in response to issues.
Quite often the people at Fox repeat these points as news (Analysis, Online). Alexandra Kitty, in her work Outfoxed, (based on a documentary of the same name) references what she calls its "seven golden rules of ideological reporting": 1- Be openly partisan.
Fox's delivery of news is primarily based on opinion more than fact.
This information can often be inaccurate, as well as manipulative.
"Positive and negative stories alike are meant to persuade the audience in order to support the media outlet's point of view" (Kitty, 39). 2- Be overtly arrogant and pompous.
Anyone who has ever seen Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity in action can ascertain this 'golden rule' (Kitty, 41). 3- Rely on style over substance.
The production at Fox News is much more attention grabbing, "edgier and sleeker" than its rival networks (Kitty, 41). 4- Focus on sensationalism, crime and reactionary opinions.
Rather than devoting a lot of time reporting on news matters of importance, Fox News consistently covers items that do not affect our daily lives.
Common themes covered on Fox consist of "lurid murder and rape trials, porn, war, rap music, and the positive deeds of CEO's" (Kitty, 42).
On February 23, 2006, Fox News anchor David Asman, in an interview with Anna Benson, a proprietor of a website dedicated to video gambling and a ranting opposition to P.E.T.A.
and Michael Moore, interjected his opinion about some photos on her website.
"There's some pictures of you in some very, ah, wonderful poses" (Morlino, Online).
Of course, edited versions of the photos flashed on the screen.
This is but one recent illustration of this golden rule.
Countless others exist.
5- Openly support war and the reigning government of the day.
The War in Iraq has been one of the most pressing and increasingly controversial issues to face the nation over the past three years.
The way it has been portrayed on Fox has been somewhat of a fairytale. "There is simply no question that Fox has made a decision to present the Iraq war as a success and as an ongoing success.
They're creating an atmosphere that says we alone are reporting the truth of Iraq; the networks, liberal media are aggressively trying to undermine our troops, undermine the war by presenting only negative images.
The goal is to fool the American people...
that the war is going well" (Kitty, 75). For a long time, the American public has been shielded from many of the harsh realities being dealt with in Iraq.
Returning bodies of killed American soldiers are never covered.
Casualty figures are rarely mentioned, especially among the civilian population.
The stories of the more than sixteen thousand soldiers wounded in the conflict are rarely if ever shared with viewers.
Part of the reason for this has been Fox's lead on its coverage on the war from a positive perspective and the race for competition among Fox's' counterparts. 6- Appeal to the disgruntled, disillusioned and neutered male.
Part of Fox's success is that it is aimed at a certain audience and played out as such.
By creating an 'us versus them' mentality, many loyal viewers of the network (see above) become angry, discontented, and antagonistic towards anyone who sees things from another perspective.
"The exploitation of their viewer's anxieties and weaknesses has helped the network gain a following and loyalty" (Kitty, 45).
7- If a critic voices a complaint, go for his jugular.
One of the rallying cries for many of the personalities at Fox has been to attack those who criticize or disagree with them.
One such event is occurring presently between Fox's Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
It seems that Mr.
Olbermann had pointed out a few O'Reilly falsehoods on his show recently, which upset the Fox host.
O'Reilly has responded with a campaign for MSNBC to "bolster its ratings by reinstating [Phil} Donahue in Olbermann's timeslot" (Gill, Online). Once again, here is a recent example of this particular golden rule.
In denouncing his competitor, O'Reilly actually fabricated that Mr.
Olbermann's ratings had gone down since his show began airing.
In fact, they had risen twenty one percent over the last year (Countdown, Online).
Once again, this illustration is one of many assaults on critics by Fox people. Clearly, the Fox News exemplifies what has happened to news casting over the past several years.
Their success in garnering high ratings through sensationalism and slick production values has caused competitors to take notice and in turn lower their own bar for covering news. Some Examples of Non Coverage of News The purpose of this essay has been to uncover the current state of news broadcasting and show how its quality has diminished greatly over the past several years.
As control over the mass media has dwindled, news has become something other than news.
The few who have control over the sights and sounds we see and hear have set their own agenda of public discussion, and have been unfettered to do so by any legal process (Graber, 75). What types of stories make the headlines these days?
What gets the attention of the consumer?
Sensationalism, blood and guts, celebrity, and human tragedy all seem to grab the attention of the public.
The media has clearly helped to shape this as a way to increase viewership, and profits. The following represents a small sampling of how the media has portrayed the representation of news by manner of right- leaning, skewed coverage, non-coverage of important events, and perpetuation of sensational stories for profit and political power. Elections The 2000 national election, as discussed earlier, carried historical implications for how the mass media would behave in the future.
The Presidential election of 2004 brought about new lows in the coverage, and non-coverage of important news surrounding the election. To begin with, only about half of eligible Americans participate in the voting process.
News media have contributed to this by drastically reducing coverage of government in general and elections in particular.
In a Pew Research Center poll conducted during the campaign, one in five people under thirty years of age stated that comedy shows such as The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live are as much of a source of election coverage as newspapers and news broadcasts (Cable, Online).
This unfortunate trend of smaller election coverage leaves citizens "vulnerable to negative and misleading political advertising that fills the airwaves instead" (Downie and Kaiser, 7). One of the biggest stories to hit the airwaves during the 2004 election was the controversy over the military records of the two candidates.
Questions over President George W.
Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard and Democratic challenger John Kerry's service in Vietnam surfaced, causing a swell of controversy.
Apparently, there was a period in which Bush was missing in action during his guard service in 1972-1973.
"According to documentary evidence available, [Bush] apparently didn't bother to show up for duty.
Commanders in Texas and Alabama say they never saw him report for duty and records show no pay to Bush when he was supposed to be on duty in Alabama" (Foser, Two, Online). In contrast, a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched an all out attack on the military service of Kerry.
In Vietnam, Kerry had received three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for actions during his tour of duty.
The Swift Boat group called into question Kerry's service, "crossing the line in branding Mr.
Kerry a coward and a liar.
This smear is contradicted by Mr.
Kerry's crewmates...
and tainted by the chief source of its funding: Republican activists dedicated to defeating Mr.
Kerry in November" (Swift, Online). These stories ultimately played out in the media, where coverage of the two controversies tells the tale of our theme.
A study performed by Media Matters, using searches of the LexisNexis database in August 2005 showed that stories about the Swift Boat claims far outnumbered stories of Bush's service 1,924 stories to 752 (Foser, Media Matters: Media, Online).
Clearly, the major news media pushed the Swift Boat claims to the forefront, while the Bush controversy received a much lower profile.
Another controversy to come out of the 2004 election was the fiasco of the voting in the state of Ohio.
After the Florida controversy in 2000, many Democrats were leery about any sort of improprieties this time around.
Going into the election it became clear that it would once again be a very close race.
As it turned out this time, the state, which had the potential to tip the election in favor of one candidate or the other, would be Ohio.
As the polls closed, President Bush was declared the victor of the election in both Ohio and the nation.
As the smoke from the election had cleared, many issues surrounding the election arose.
The first and most glaring controversy surrounding the Ohio election was the discrepancy between the exit polls and the election results.
Exit polls, conducted throughout the day, predicted an upset victory for Kerry in the state.
Yet as the polls closed and vote counts began to come in, the numbers began to invert.
John Conyers, Jr., a Congressional Representative from Detroit, took notice of this anomaly and, with others, began to look into more controversies surrounding the Ohio polling: - Diebold Systems, Inc., whose CEO, Walden Odell, had "vowed to deliver Ohio's votes to Bush" (Pitt, Online), was contracted by Ohio's Board of Elections to provide new, computerized voting machines for Ohio elections.
These machines allowed for no paper trail of voter's tallies, thereby making any recount impossible.
- "Precincts in Perry County recorded more votes than voters.
- There was a shortage of voting machines in traditionally Democratic counties, causing voters to wait up to ten hours to cast their ballots.
- Members of the press were barred from observing vote counting in Warren County, claiming an FBI agent had warned of a terrorist threat...but the FBI has no record of such a threat" (Conyers, Online).
Mr.
Conyers, taking the lead on this issue, attempted to compel the House Judiciary Committee to hold official hearings on the matter.
On December 13, his request was granted and hearings were held to discuss the inconsistencies of the election.
The hearings, not deemed official by the Republican controlled House of Representatives, were not permitted to be called 'hearings', but instead referred to as 'forums.' Not a single Republican congressman attended.
The press never covered much on these stories.
A large majority of the American public never even heard any of these discrepancies and accepted the results of the questionable Ohio election, in no small part due to the non-coverage of the controversies. Non-News Two areas of news that have seemingly gone missing in today's media have been foreign news and social issues.
In today's smaller global world, events occurring outside the United States can have a huge impact on our daily lives.
The same can be said for social issues, which do not seem exciting or sensational in the eyes of the mass media.
"In newsrooms across America, there is less emphasis on informing viewers and more on entertaining them.
One area that has been particularly hard hit is foreign news" (Radford, 189).
Some of the major stories from abroad over the past several years include the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the U.N.
Food for Oil scandal, and many others.
Coverage of these stories is minimal at best.
Particularly meritorious of major coverage is the situation in Darfur.
In some estimates, over four hundred thousand people have been murdered in this anarchy-riddled region of Africa.
Yet, in the month of June 2005, the broadcast media devoted twelve times the amount of coverage to the engagement of Tom Cruise to Katie Holmes than on the mass murder in Darfur (Lobe, Online).
In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated much of southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
For several weeks, horrific images of the devastation and misery seemingly awakened the minds of many to the plight of poverty.
Within a couple of months or so, the media moved on to other things.
"The conversation in Washington has moved from confronting poverty with bold action to cutting the food stamp program and enacting further tax cuts" (Lloyd, Online). Final Thoughts The Telecommunications Act of 1996 changed a lot in the way the mass media operates.
In twenty years, ownership of newspapers, television and radio stations, and other media outlets has dwindled greatly from fifty in 1980 to only five today.
With this consolidation of the media comes a consolidation of great economic and political power, as these five corporations alone "decide what most citizens will - or will not learn" (Bagdikian, 16).
Driven by a desire for both economic and political power, the media companies have resorted to sensationalism, celebrity, and slick production values to drive profits up and a careful selection of stories to cover which fit political agendas.
Both of these conditions are echoed through the sentiments of Americans as told through recent Pew Research Center Polls: - "Most Americans agree that news organizations, when deciding what stories to report, care more about attracting the biggest audience rather than keeping the public informed" (Summary, Online).
- "Pressure to attract audiences is pushing their industry too far in the direction of infotainment" (Striking, Online).
- "An increasing number of independents also believe the press has not been critical enough in its coverage of the Bush administration's policies and performance" (Summary, Online).
There can be no question that the political spectrum of the media has shifted.
What was once considered a 'liberal media' can now be deemed right of center, to say the least.
Account-ability, a long held ideology of the American press has been conspicuously absent during the present administration.
Now that the unfortunate state of today's news media has been examined, it is necessary to suggest how the average American can get real, important news.
The most obvious answer is to get news from more than one source.
To always rely on only one source for all information is dangerously ignorant in this present condition of news reporting.
In a perfect democracy, people have a voice in how they are governed.
They solicit information from multiple sources to remain knowledgeable about issues that concern them.
Access to this information is crucial even for an imperfect democracy such as ours.
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