Media Literacy, second edition, W. James Potter: Response to Assigned Reading, p. 85 - 107
The reading was about the processes of jounalism, including the formulas for producing "news" stories. The population depends on journalists to funtion as reporters of the unbiased facts. We are at their mercy to have access to infomation about the happenings in our communities, governments, and in the world. The constraints, pressures, and influences about the the choice of content, fed in by the spin meisters to "hook" the audience obviously are not a environment conducive to unbiased reporting. The shift of the media from a funtion of informing the public to cashing- in on entertaining it is driven by what the public wants, and what we put up with. The studies in W. James Potter's book show that the stuff they give is the stuff we take. That's why the advertisers pay to be on - because we keep watching! "Money makes the world go around!", as I understand it. Does it seem that WE, the people, are ultimately responsible?
People know this stuff and are overwhelmed, it's like if you don't laugh, you'll cry. That's how and why The Daily Show with Jon Stewart makes us laugh.
People know this stuff and are overwhelmed, it's like if you don't laugh, you'll cry. That's how and why The Daily Show with Jon Stewart makes us laugh.
posted by Marigrace @ 9:23 PM
1 Comments:
At 6:28 PM,
negativeionz said…
One thing possibly worth mentioning is that our system of government is particularly dependant on media to function. I think both Media Literacy and America (the book) point that out, but only briefly touch on the subject. Obviously any society can benefit from being well informed of world events, but in our pseudo-democracy (more of a republic in my opinion) we expect common citizens to pretend to play a more direct role in government than many other forms of government. With that pretend direct influence comes a certain pretend responsibility, which is to be well informed of the voting issues. When almost every citizen is given a pretend vote, the majority of them rely exclusively on TV news for information, and the news media is more concerned about selling products than valuable information, you have a giant recipe for disaster. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine the most openly corrupt president in years being re-elected based almost exclusively on simplistic religious preference under that system of government. Frightening, I know.
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