Wednesday, November 19, 2008

One Sided Media

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism


Posted by Jacob at 8:40 AM

1 comment:

Jacob said...

My paper deals with the ownership of media in the United States, and also its subsequent affect on the content and quality of our media. In America there are five companies that control the majority of the media: Viacom, NewsCorp, Disney, Comcast, and Time-Warner. This oligopoly, if you will, controls the television, the movies, the radio, the newspaper, the magazines, the music industry, and even some of the prime property on the web such as MySpace (NewsCorp). The dilemma of the situation can be best analogized by using the famous quote from Peter Parker/Spider-man’s dear Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.” These companies have enormous power over the world and it is important that they use their powers responsibly. For example, the majority of the children in the United States regularly watch Disney’s movies and programs; a lot of what these developing minds learn can be influenced by this company. Disney has this enormous power over these children and it is their responsibility to expose them to appropriate and wholesome material. Some critics argue that Disney exposes children to sexism, male dominance, violence, racism, and a score of other -ism related problems. That is Disney’s problem to deal with; personally I feel that the Disney’s stories are just remaining consistent with the storytelling of the past several centuries. One of the blatant problems I see in the industry is with the news.
The video I chose, the first segment of the documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, demonstrates some of the ways that News Corp, Murdoch’s media conglomerate, presents blatant bias in their broadcasting, specifically their television news programs. My predicament with News Corp is not necessarily that their news is presented with conservative ideals squeezed in, but more so my problem is that they are the worst offender of the industry with their inability to uphold journalistic integrity in their programming. “Fair and Balanced” is the tagline used by Fox News Channel to promote their program. Many media critics cringe at the idea that Fox, the most biased news network, adopted the “Hippocratic Oath” of journalism as its tagline while still devaluing and breaking the ideal.
Bill O’Reilly, one of the worst offenders to the idealism of journalistic integrity, has a daily show on the Fox News Channel, there is a section in Outfoxed that concentrates and shows clips and examples of O’Reilly’s broadcast. In his daily program O’Reilly constantly turns off the microphones of and threatens correspondents who question or go against any of his personal conservative beliefs.
The image I created in response to the documentary represents the way that Bill O’Reilly treats the un-likeminded guests on his “news” show. “One Sided Communication”, I feel, can be used as a model for almost all of the news media in industry because of the blatant bias presented its programming. It seems to me that they oligopoly has the power to say what they want it there is extremely limited feed back. Therefore the communication goes only one way.
If you have the time I suggest that you watch the rest of OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism on You Tube, it’s an extremely interesting watch. Some would call it “eye-opening”.

November 19, 2008 at 9:33 AM

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