This research examines how the mass media distort or influence the experience of reality in the culture. The plan of the research will be to show linkages between corporate control of mass-media entities and the range of biases that may be attributed to or identified with media outlets, and then to discuss ways in which media, particularly television affect, create, or influence everyday reality, with special reference to an episode of the 1990s dramatic series Homicide, called "The Subway."
McLuhan's famous statement about TV that the medium is the message is the theoretical cornerstone of studying mass-media effects on individuals and culture. The basic idea is that the electronic medium in which messages are delivered has an effectiveness that has more to do with the medium than with the content of its messages. If that was true in the 1960s, when the power of television was far less technically sophisticated than it was by the 1990s, how much more it appears to be true today. What has not changed, however, is that commercial interests govern much of the content of television. Media-involved institutions rely on the special training or expertise of educated or technocratic individuals who make up the media elite, and they seek as their personnel those who can serve the profit motive. To put it another way, money is a factor of any analysis of television. In that regard, Viser asserts that commercialism and advertising in television are themselves a culture because of the "ever-increasing ubiquity of materialist messages found in mass communication" (Viser 109).
Controversy surrounds the issue of media bias, which is the name given to the idea that media outlets shape their messages according to the political views held by reporters, editors, etc. Political conservatives point to the "left of center" bias of the editorial pages and say that "there's a liberal press out there and it's a lot bigger than the conservative press," a...