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New Media

Power, Politics, Information & Control

According to W. Lance Bennett in News: The Politics of Illusion, the only things we cannot expect in the form and content of our mass media news are substance, objectivity, and truth. This is because there is a three-way struggles for control of information among the government, interest groups, and the public, but the public is losing ground because of a purposeful attempt by interest groups and the government to keep the real facts of their actions away from the public “As long as information control is essential to the accumulation of power, and as long as information control is tacitly justified by fears of an informed public, political actors will never be compelled to release candid news of their political dealings” (Bennett x).

There is a symbiotic relationship between the news media and political actors depicted by Bennett. The public is often accused of being uninformed of political activities and events. Bennett claims it is not because they do not care or have access to the media, but, rather, it is because new organizations seldom provide clear, informative, objective images of the world in which they live. The author argues that news is above all a product, a consumer good whose illusory promotion of distinctiveness actually blurs the underlying reality of what is being sold. In order to be well sold, Bennett argues that form takes precedence over substance and content is geared toward uniformity not distinction. Form most often follows what is thought to fit with American lifestyles, be it morning radio news broadcasts on our way to work in the car, various morning news programs designed to capture different types of viewers, or other formats that are designed to be in synch with out tastes, needs, and self-images. However, despite the variety of forms news shows may take, Bennett (7) insists the content is narrow and uniform “Recognizing the narrow range of cont...

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New Media. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 01:04, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686022.html