Control Room, By Jehane Joujaim

People automatically assume that a news organization’s bias is strictly a bad thing, while this does seem like a bad thing, the bias is negated by the sheer quantity of news sites that you can easily visit, this may take some additional time, but it doesn’t have to take a long time, while you’re stuck in traffic you can just pull out your smartphone and look at some news sites. If you find that one site has too much of a bias that doesn’t mean that you should just ignore that site completely, instead you should look for the same news story on a different site that has a different perspective, instead of just looking at the media from one point of view, look at both the left and right point of view. This bias allows for a look into how both sides see an argument, while one side may see something as a good thing, another side may see it as a bad thing. This allows you to get into the mind of the news stations and their reporters. While you're watching the news always maintain a level of skepticism about what the news station is saying. Skepticism is key to watching the news in any environment, without any level of skepticism you quickly become a mindless zombies that just believe something because it was said on Fox NEWS or MSNBC. You should take into account all the things said by the different news stations in order to formulate

The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that 's power. The article “Reality TV Goes Where Football Meets the Hijab”, published in the New York Times in November 2011, introduces how the media controls the minds of the masses. Media has become a major issue in our daily lives. We live in a world that we cannot have access to what is going around us, unless we refer to the media. For instance, in our daily routine we usually listen to the news in the morning or at night before we sleep. The news has already been reported and its being delivered to us that fast, but how do we know if what is being said is what is actually happening or if it has been manipulated for political/social reasons? In the beginning of the article, Porochista Khakpour the author of the article, Iranian born American reared, mentions: “If anything made me, an American, it was televisions.” TV, especially the reality TV, resembles the characters and movie stars the way they want to not the way they are. Khakpour said, "Darkness-dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin-always equaled trouble, as if it actually implied a dark side". When we watch TV, most of the movie characters are labeled, either by their gender, religion, or color. Khakpour reaches out to the "outcasts", to prove her point on reality TV shows shaping our beliefs towards each other, especially the "freaks”.

Many stories are written in a positive or negative way to make a event seem in a negative or a positive way. Each news source has a way of tell how an event happened whether it is true or false information. Most of the time a news station hears about an event occurring and tries to be apart of it by telling the story but the source does not always have all the details so it is not credible. Usually by the day after the event occurs is when the media is a little more accurate with the details, but not one hundred percent yet. If one does not check different news sources for the same event to check the informations, the source can mislead the person and give false information. A news station like Fox News believes in personal responsibility and limited government, where ABC News believes in government actions for equal opportunity. With having different view neither source will be exactly the same because both have different ways of writ ring and

“Fair and balanced” is the slogan for Fox News. Tim Dickinson, the author of “How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory The onetime Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America’s Unfair and Imbalanced Network,” couldn’t disagree more. Dickinson, in criticism of Fox News, quotes Roger Ailes, the founder of the news network by saying that “Forget all the facts and figures, and move to the offense as quickly as possible” would serve as a more appropriate slogan. (Dickinson, ’11 p.7) In short the author feels that Ailes is “cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism.”(Dickinson, ’11 p. 2)

The methods that people nowadays use to get news of any kind, whether it be sports, weather, or global, have changed drastically from the time where news was only available through newspapers and radio stations. Regarding terrorism, the media is the only source of information, unless it is a primary account of a soldier who had been at war. However, the media is able to manipulate any story to make someone or something either look good or bad. This is exactly what happened after the occurrence of 9/11. The media, along with the government, caught the wave of nationalism sweeping across the country and built news stories favoring America. For example, not many people talk about how the American government in 1990, intervened in the Middle East after Iraq invaded Kuwait, which could be a possible cause for the attacks of 9/11. This event and many other instances of American intervention in the Middle East have been swept under the rug by the U.S. government through the media. These incidences were all put forth as necessary steps to protect “our” best interests in the region. John Steinbrink, a professor of education and Jeremy Cook, a doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State University, used the media’s coverage of the aftermath of 9/11 as an example for education in media literacy, which is “the ability to read, understand, and interpret the influence of all forms of media in one’s life” (284). Using

When Americans attempt to find the truth in the media, it is important Americans realize what bias each individual media platform has. In the beginning of television, there were only 3 major news channels. These news networks were: ABC, CBS, and NBC; also known as “Mainstream Media”. The mainstream media held views that aligned with American liberals and seemed to always side with this group and were the only news stations for Americans to view. Ultimately, since these were the only news outlets available, whatever views these news stations presented to its watchers, were the only opinions that the majority of Americans held. However, as time went on cable television was created and gave Americans additional news networks. In 1980, CNN debuted

What this paper seeks to address are the differences and underlying reasons in media coverage and national perceptions, as demonstrated by the case of Bergdahl and Shalit. Despite the remarkable similarities between the two stories of their captivity and release, why did each play out so differently in their countries’ respective media outlets? These two cases can help us understand what role the media plays in delivering the news and how certain news is framed and for what purpose. It also demonstrates the role that partisan coverage plays in the current media environment and how those narratives define perceptions of the event and essentially tell the viewer what to believe, instead of giving them information to make their opinions.

This book chapter also introduces surveys, examples and statistics that will help support my argument and further my research. This book chapter differs from the article, “Framing Arab-American and Muslims in the U.S. Media” because it explores the way that the U.S. media attempted to aid in the destruction of the Arab and Muslims terrorist stereotype, but ultimately failed. It provides an interesting contrast from the article, presenting a more positive way that the media tried to portray Arab and Muslims after 9/11. This book chapter, although different than the article, does reinforce the same idea that Arab and Muslims were ostracized following the events of 9/11 and felt they needed to prove themselves to the rest of American citizens as “good Americans”. The information in this book chapter is reliable because it has numerous cited examples and statistics that reinforce the validity of the main idea. This book chapter helps perpetuate my research as it gives me another perspective on the influence of the U.S. Media, and encourages me to continue down this path of research, and I will now be looking for how the U.S. media have tried to correct the terrorism stereotype they perpetuated against Arabs and

Human beings are influenced by what they see, hear, or read on the news. Today we have several sources to receive news: newspapers, internet, and radio. However, with this information people come to question what is truly the truth. The Cable News Network (CNN) displays footage of current events happening all around the world. This well-known 24-hour news broadcasting system began to change its traditional pattern of news began to encapsulate the way media directs the foreign policy formulation. For the individuals behind the scenes, including policy makers and academics, the 1990’s was a time of media empowerment and growth. Piers Robinson thesis in the “CNN effect revisited” is the ways in which the media influences foreign policy formulation, socially and politically. In his argumentative essay, Robinson discusses the development of foreign policy since the “war on terror” and the “humanitarian war.” Additionally, Robinson discusses the ways media intervened with political decisions and how the media’s voice created military action. The media that has the privilege to voice opinions, can result in less freedom for the press

Clayton Eshleman’s poem, “The Power Room”, in his book, Juniper Fuse, is a walking poem travelling in and out of nature, and in and out of the mind, suspending itself in a moment (a moment Eshleman discusses within the introduction of Juniper Fuse) of elevated consciousness or the act of becoming more self-conscious (xvii). The poem begins with acknowledging the “spiritum” of the path. This is a reference made to the spirits of those whom inhabited the land prior to the speaker’s arrival. In Gary Snyder’s essay, “The Place, The Region, And The Commons”, he wrote, “The sum of a field’s forces becomes what we call very loosely the “spirit of the place” (38). In Eshleman’s poem, these “forces” include, the sum of “the rockface” and the

In her article Mass Media, she talks about how nightly news lead stories are ones of the most recent and extreme disasters or crimes. Things like this attract viewers which then means more money. Akin sees this as a negative to media because these are not the stories that should be the most important. More important stories are pushed aside in favor of the most recent, the most colorful, and the most shocking aspects of a conflict. Groups that understand this dynamic can cater to it in order to gain media attention. Most of the news I watch had more stories of soft news then it did hard. This is because people are more intrigued to stories that are more appealing and interesting at the moment. The more important stories can be seen as boring, when in reality they will have the biggest impact. The news can mislead and withhold important information for ratings and financial success and this in turn does not inform the public

In August of 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Within less than a year, the United States and thirty-three other nations decided to respond with war. A series of individuals and organizations across the globe suggested that the United States and other nations had ulterior motives that prompted the intervention. However, these reasons failed to surface in the media’s debates. The United States media used censorship and deceit to steer the public’s opinion in favor of the Gulf War as a means of serving the interests of their corporate donors and owners.

There are many different hidden truths in the media that people do not know about due to the fact that the media emphasizes on just one particular point of view. Throughout the years, people have been biased in the media and the reason as to why this happens is that people choose to lean on one side such as republican, democrat, libertarian, or conservative. To be biased means to only be on one side of an argument or situation and only favor more of what one person has to say. There are a variety of different news channels in which they all tend to lean more on one side, there is not a single news channel that is on the same side as another. There are many current events that have multiple contentious between other news channels. The viewers

The facts to this are that FOX news channel is notorious for being a conservative news channel. They report one sided toward conservative views and arguing against the liberal side on a regular basis. The slogan “fair and balanced” is not a good representation of words, which simply describe what the news channel gives their viewers. It would make much more sense for the station to take Haddock’s advice and change the slogan to something like “perspective” that better describes the station. FOX news is not giving “fair and balanced” information to their viewers but rather they are showing them the “perspective” of the conservative side.

Syed Soharwardy asserts that “Media always tried to portray Islam as a religion of terror and all the Muslims as terrorists. The way the talk-show programs and news are produced and presented, it seems that the media has already decided the guilty verdict, regardless what would be the outcome of an investigation” (Soharwardy). So too do members of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee recognize the media’s predisposition toward bias, as is pointed out in this statement, found on their website: “Key industries of American mass culture, Holllywood and television, for decades have been bastions of anti-Arab stereotyping, and have consistently resisted positive or realistic representations of Arabs and Arab Americans. (Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee).”