Dissemination of the News
This is an excerpt from the paper...
As W. Lance Bennett points out in his book News: The Politics of Illusion, Americans today are awash in news from newspapers, publications of every variety, books, broadcast television stations, radio stations, and cable, including 24-hour cable new outlets such as CNN, C-Span, and CNN Headline News. Yet, the question is raised as to how trustworthy all this news is and especially as to how true a picture of society is presented in these many news broadcasts. The question is raised in part because of the growing apathy apparent in the electorate and because of opinion polls which indicate that "many citizens--perhaps the majority--live in a state of confusion and ignorance about government and political issues" (Bennett 1). Bennett sees this as a paradox and explores it in his book in an extended discussion specifically geared to the issue of politics and how it is conveyed in the media, including issues of possible media bias, manipulation by politicians, the involvement of journalists in the political process, and the effects on the public.Bennett begins with the statement that the news, while all around us, is also superficial. Television news dominates today, and television news in particular tends toward the superficial. Even on stories of substance, television news only has a limited time in which to present the facts. In spite of this, however, we are more and more dependent on the news. The dissemination of the news is seen as a vital function in a democratic
. . .
relationship between image and reality:
The thing that makes an image compelling is not sound logic based in objective fact, but its appeal to hopes and fears based on self-fulfilling logic and self-serving fact (Bennett 97).
The news media is part of the ruling establishment, and as such it has a certain stake in maintaining the status quo just as do political leaders and business leaders. The media is involved in a process of "engineering consent," or what Noam Chomsky has called "manufacturing consent." The model of the mass media embodied in the idea of the engineering of consent is opposed to the accepted conception of the media as serving a role in a democracy that largely follows rather than creates public opinion. As Herman and Chomsky show in their book, Manufacturing Consent, the press is more often a follower of the entrenched leadership than of public opinion and serves a role as shaper of public opinion by giving the "official version" of reality. The American public is fed a diet of disinformation put out by official sources. Since the government and the press seem to be at odds, or at least to be on opposite sides of a process, the question arises as to how this operates--how does the media become something
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Rights Bennett's, Herman Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, CNN Headline, Martin Mayer, Manufacturing Consent, Illusion Americans, herman chomsky, Founding Fathers, mass media, respectable discourse, Review January, corporate governing elite, five filters, noam chomsky, corporate governing, manufacturing consent, political process, public opinion, governing elite, York Longman, political economy mass, constitutes respectable discourse, serves corporate governing, media serves corporate,
Approximate Word count = 2959
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Dissemination of the News
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
