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Poor People And Poverty In The Mass Media

Decent Essays

1. Despite 40 million poor people being in the nation, less than one in 500 articles in New York Times and one in thousand articles in Readers Guide to Periodic Literature are about poverty. The highly concentrated media businesses tend to ignore poor people and portray them as a negative aspect of the society. Poor people and their misery is often unnoticed and is masked by and misleading stories and are even turned into statistics used for debates and discussions. The media points out poverty as the failure of what poor people do and identifies it as a part of cycle, which includes poor people and their deprivation; So basically, poor people and poverty are depicted as causes and effects of each other. Therefore, the media seems to mark poor people as unimportant and often, false and unimportant aspects are portrayed in their stories.

2. The media generally tends to prioritize concerns of wealthy people and presents their concerns as the concerns of all. For example, the news media focuses more on stocks and business news although relatively few people own them. Mostly, the media focuses on interests of high class and success stories but fails to notice the impact of rich class on national level policies which include corporate lobbying and supporting political parties. Sometimes, selected elite individuals are mocked for their personality flaws and inappropriate manners, but the media usually appears to be supporting the elite and this is mainly because the owners

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