The Media as a Business, not a News Service

The topic that I am thinking about using for this assignment deals with how the media is, in fact, a business and not a service. Consequently it is extremely important for the viewer to be aware. I find the twists that the media puts on catastrophic events to be terrible for society. Rather than spreading the news of the event they turn it into an ongoing story. The twisted result becomes more like a show than a news report. It highlights the disaster in a way that brings more negativity. Often, the person who was responsible gets so much attention they are surely viewed as a martyr. A perfect example is the Virginia Tech tragedy. Seung Hui Cho, the boy responsible for the event, received far too much attention for his actions. The goal of the news became to find out about his life rather than focus on the victims. I am sure these actions have caused other people who may be depressed and angry to see him as a martyr, not a murderer. Another negative effect was the racial backlash that resulted from the incident. Both of these problems could have been avoided if the news channels had just presented the story, focusing on the event, rather than dragging it on into a tale to boost television ratings.

Trust in the Age of Diversity and Spin

1) I found this article to be very interesting. It took the conventional way that we view news and presented it from a completely different outlook. People, in general, view the news as a source of information, so it was out of the ordinary to hear an argument that stated that we the people in fact are the ones who decide what we are presented in the news.
2) This article presents a fairly strong argument. Michael Hedges takes the stance that institutions, particularly the media, use much of their time and money to protect the power and influence that they have over the general public. This is a major feat to attempt considering people are always changing and shifting their views and opinions, so these companies eventually fail to sustain this power. The result is that companies seem to spend more money and resources on public relations issues than production, and the news companies spend more time telling people what they want to hear instead of presenting the truth.
Hedges then moves on in his article to provide effective evidence to support this stance. He provides many examples of how companies’ executives and political heads attempt, in his own words to “sanitize” free information. In support of these statements used to support his stance Hedges explains and informs the reader of Wiki Scanner. One of his final supporting evidence comes from a study from Robert Putnam. The general idea of the study is that the more different views the media presents, the more power these companies loose over the people. Hedges then goes on to explain that the news companies only compound this problem by further trying to control the situation by putting more news with different views out there. All of this evidence ties back to his thesis and provides a very sound argument.
The only major counterargument that I can find in this article deals with Hedges prediction of television. It still remains a dominant force, both in news and advertising, and is not necessarily going to die down in a decade. This is a major bifurcation. Just because the newspaper has lost support does not lead to a conclusion that the television will face the same problem in the following decade. It was therefore a waste of time for Hedges to spend so much time on this relationship in his article—a relationship that when closely examined can actually be used against the article. However, taken as a whole this essay provided a very sound argument.