Final Exam

The media as a linkage institution needs to function as an intermediate between government and people and ensure the operation of a democratic society. There are six standards for the role of the media, five of which are layed out extensively in Leighly’s Mass Media & Politics, and the last one described in de Tocqueville’s article.

Objective Fact Seeking-The presenting of facts in a neutral, objective tone without the assuming of any stance or position on a given issue. In addition, the media must mention both sides of an issue and allot equivalent time and space to ensure overall fairness.
Public Advocacy-The media operates to serve the interests and good of the general public. It does this by keeping citizens informed of government, and advocating the specific societal needs.
Neutral Adversary- Media plays a critical role in democracy functioning to keep government power n check and ensuring it does not exploit its power, neglect the people in pursuit of self- interest.
Profit Seeking-The media, as a commercial industry, functions to maximize profit and generate revenues for its shareholders.
Propagandist-The press is seen as a means for government to help influence public support for its policies through the use of persuasive techniques, such as emotion evoking images, rhetoric and myths.
De Tocqueville's Democratic Participation-Media functions to maintain civilization, and bring people together to allow the existence of a democracy.

From the six different standards mentioned, the public advocate model would be most beneficial to society, as it encompasses the greatest and most necessary elements of all the other models, without overemphasizing any one particular aspect. The Objective Fact Seeking Model tends to be favored, but I do not see it as a realistic expectation. It is exceedingly difficult to determine what the standards for objectivity is without actually being subjective (see my argument for this here). The Propagandist relegates the media into nothing more than a pawn of the government, the Profit Seeking spawns tabloid journalism, fluff news, and horse race coverage, and the Neutral Adversary places too much emphasis on criticism of government potentially resulting in the neglecting of other key issues. De Tocqueville’s standard need to delineate a more definitive task for the media.
Therefore, rather than reporting the cheap, sensational and entertaining, Media should provide coverage that benefits society. While maintaining financial self sufficiency, and allowing special interests to thrive, it must also ensure that citizens are capable of self government by fostering an environment of discussion and debate on public affairs, serving as a watch dog against government failures, and overall involving citizens in the political process. Therefore, Media should not only select issues that are pertinent to society, but report news in a way that would be conducive to public affairs. However, this model relies heavily on the reporter’s assessment of societal needs, and media staff members assuming the role of political activists, therefore requiring much competence and expertise to implement this task into the actual news covering process.

However, modern day Mainstream Media does not even come close to meeting this standard.
As Dan Gilmore laments, in Grassroots of Journalism, the moments where Big Media served as a public advocate reached its peak in the 60’s and 70’s, when anchorman like Walter Cronkite brought legitimate areas of public concern to people's attention.
From narrowcasting, where mass media no longer delivers to a broad representative public, to tabloid journalism, where emphasis is played on sex, scandal and sensationalism, to priming that is used to influence our perception of crucial issues, our modern day media is plagued with issues that thwart its potential as a public advocate.

Media has a tendency to paint the world in black and white descriptions, through stereotyping and storytelling of villains, victims and superheroes. (Read my previous post on the embedded comic strip) Leighly and McChesney point out, there is an overemphasis on crime and violence. The hyped up coverage of the DC sniper incident, for instance, caused irrational fears and misconceptions. There is also a shift from hard news to soft news; society tends to suffer particuarly from the fluff news in election coverage, that emphasizes horse race, strategy and scandal. In addition, the quality of foreign affairs coverage has plummeted, a particularly critical failure, as citizens have little direct experience in this area and strongly rely on media coverage. Episodic framing is another negative characteristic of the media, where it compromises the integrity of a story by not providing sufficient background or framing it in a particular misleading conext. For instance, is job loss individual failure, or is it indicative of the negative state of the economy?
Overall these series of characteristics of our modern media has resulted in a failure to serve the public. Rather than aiding citizens to participate in self- government, and providing them with the tools necessary to make educated decisions, the media has spawned widespread political ignorance, apathy and cynicism.

For instance, the Mark Foley incident certainly needed to be covered, but rather than the sleazy details of his sexual innuendos, (see below) and an in depth analysis of the political ramification for the Republican Party, emphasis should have been placed on why his actions survived as one of the best kept secrets in Washington . If the incident had been presented in the context of exposing the dire need of reform for US Senate and House, and how stricter laws need to be implemented to improve the overall moral integrity of our government, the media may have actually served a higher purpose.




Society overall has been deprived of proper news coverage. Long standing issues such as social issues like poverty, healthcare and racism are often neglected even when they are very pertinent. The quality of foreign politics coverage has plummeted as well, and this failure is particularly critical as citizens have little direct experience with international affairs, and strongly rely upon media coverage to make informed decisions.
The local media fails as well; many people would be more involved in their community government if they knew about the series of issues in deliberation and who is behind them.

Gilmore applauds Modern Talk Radio in We The Media and describes how “Howard Kurtzhow exclaimed that talk radio predated, and in many ways precipitated the web log phenomena.” To some degree, this industry constitutes an exception to the failures of Big Media. Modern Talk Radio surpasses as a means of unleashing political anger helping to bring society together in a series of other areas, such as social issues, where expert health, financial or legal advice is offered, and listeners can ask questions or comment.

However, overall Big Media-television news networks, newspapers and other main non internet sources of news- have failed as public advocates. In fact, according to McChesney, "the Modern Mass media is an antidemocratic force failing to serve public good." Pertinent issues suffer from a lack of sufficient coverage, often simply because the Media doesn’t consider them to be conducive to maximizing profit. Sometimes the issues are controversial and can ostracize readers, shareholders or advertisers, or may even cause a conflict of interest. Thus, what is reported tends to be as Professor Pimpare describes “fast, cheap and sensational.”

However, when events are recorded by people with direct or personal experience rather than dispassionate bystanders, and when profit incentive doesn’t play a ubiquitous role in the ways news is presented, new doors open for the quality of news. New Media has emerged as viable alternative to Mainstream Media. It is no surprise that Time has selected as person of the year “Yes, you. You control the information age. Welcome to the world” with over twenty pages giving acclaiming interactive communities on the world wide web, such as YouTube, My Space, Facebook, Wikipedia the Bloggosphere. Time goes into deep analysis of worthy outcomes for each of these sites. Such as Lane Hudson’s “Stop Sexual Predators” blog that ultimately led to the publicizing of the Mark Foley Page scandal, the overall good effects of the flickr website where anyone can upload and view images and photos, Captain Lee Kelley’s Wordssmith at War military video blogger of the Iraq War, at with over 200, 000 hits, Sidarth’s YouTube recording of Senator George Allen’s macacagate scandal (watch clip below), as well as an attribute to Simon Pulsifer, coined the Duke of Data, who has edited and authored nearly a 100, 000 articles.

"Amateurs are filling the vacuum created by everything the old media chose to ignore” Steven Johnson from Time magazine.



Democratic participation has surged as new opportunities have arisen for like-minded people to organize and communicate in an easy convenient fashion. Emails and petitions have made contact between citizens, and government officials feasible. Blogs and chatgroups have allowed people to voice concern over policymaking or developments in the news.
Education and research has never been easier, as new pools of valuable information can be accessed instanteously previously available only in paper version at substantial cost.

The internet becomes a particularly viable alternative, when mass media misrespresents, downplays, or completely neglects an issue; New Media is replete with potential to bring public awareness to legitimate areas of concern that are otherwise receiving little or no attention by the MSM. Occasionally, Big Media will cover a story or event that is circulating New Media. Consider the Irish Trojan Blog who was named # 1 blogger and achieved fame in the NY Times, and Washington Post, for his exceptional coverage of the Katrina landfall aftermath.
Dan Gilmor talks about particular groups, such as Kuro5hin which is written and edited by its users, and OhMyNews a Korean news site created entirely by citizen journalists.
Thus emails, mailing list, chat groups, and blogs have help form this new standard for news gathering

However, there is no question, that there is a downside to news disseminating so rapidly, and the loosening of conventional standards of reporting. Dan Gilmore’s We the Media is criticized by many as utopian. One particular area of concern, is the new opportunities for slander and privacy violations that have emerged. Video clips, sound-bites, or text versions can report instantaneously the faux pauses, racial slurs, or criminal activities of any individual. Government officials, however, have been most directly affected by this. Senator George Allen defeat and Howard Dean’s failing presidential campaign could largely be attributed to the effectiveness of these web communication. An additional concern, is that nonprofessional news sources tend to provide very one-sided or even inaccurate analysis of a particular incident or issue. Extensive research is often required to find websites that provide adequate alternating viewpoints. Thus, reliance on citizen journalists such as bloggers or new sources does has shortcomings and leaves room for misinformation. For instance, Time magazine actually talks about a Chinese blogger, Wang Xiaofeng, who is famous despite the fact that he makes up many polls and surveys. Furthermore, the internet only enhances democratic participation for people who already have an interest or are informed about politics.

Therefore, the effects of the internet as a public advocate relies strongly on the individual's ability to utilize its facilities effectively, and sift through information to find what is germane, and authentic. Overall though, the internet is replete with potential to advocate for the bettering of society in a manner that is unfound and unprecedented in other industry.

However, as McChesney writes in the Problem of the Media, “the future of the internet is anything but certain.” In some ways, the future looks good for the internet. Better technology people will aid people in sifting through information more efficiently, and programs like Microsoft’s New Junkie and MyYahoo! will contine to emerge to help rate, organize, and search through news stories and sources more effectively.

Unfortunately, however, there also are a series of bleak predictions with regard to the future of the industry. Among the chief of concerns, is what Jeff Chester describes as The End of the Internet, warning how “The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.”

If indeed economic interests continue to play a bigger role in New Media, until all forms of the news and information generating processes evolve into a commercial industry, problems of Big Media will likely penetrate the web as well. Financial considerations will govern the publishing of content on the internet and only those who are economically viable, such as corporations, special interest groups, and advertising companies would be able to survive in the industury. Everyone else would be relegated to the slow lane or completely shut out, and this would mark a decline in nonprofit organizations, and peer to peer communications that have so postively distinguished the news content on the internet. Greater regulation and control of the online experience could result in a limit in the number of Media streams, downloads, or even email messages that could be sent or received. As McChesney laments, “From spam emails, to advertising revenue driven search engines, the internet is going hypercommercial.”

As, Lawrence Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation of the phone lines that helped to make the Internet into the vibrant, diverse and democratic medium it is today.Telephone and cable lobbyists of companies like Verizon, Bell South, and Comcast are currently engaged in a political campaign, but unfortunately, these crucial policy deliberations are not reported in the Mainstream Media, and general public is misinformed. However, there are many organizations that have emerged to help perserve freedom of the web, that has become known as "net neutrality." Common Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project Consumers Union, and Save The Internet are a few of the key players.



Inevitably, the Web is on the brink of a major transformation; the two industries, Big Media and New Media will merging into one. Ultimately, current web experiences will be recalled with nostalgia, and the overall success of the public advocate model, as a standard for news reporting will disintegrate into nothing more than a utopian dream.

The Embedded Comic Strips

Rather then serving to provide pertinent high quality information to help inform citizens about their government and its policies, the Media is notorious for covering events in the juiciest, most eye catching fashion even if it means relegating public figures to villain, victims, and superheroes.

In light of recent events, such as the mounting death toll in Iraq, and the escalating clashes between tyrannical regimes in the Middle East and the US, changes in the foreign policy such as military proposals calling for a staged withdrawal from Iraq, and the administration’s willingness to implement more diplomatic tactics in the Middle East are crucial developments. Negotiating with neighboring countries to alleviate the political turmoil in Iraq, the push to rekindle peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and pursuing an international conference that would lead to direct talks between Tehran, Damascus and Washington are a few possible outcomes of the new diplomatic approach. However, the political officials who are the potential executers of these changes in foreign policy, and are leading these critical events have received coverage akin to the narration of characters in a comic strip. New potential superheroes with names like “James Baker” and “Lee Hamilton” with rescue squads dubbed the “Iraq Study Group” have seemed to emerge. Bush is portrayed as a stubborn animated figure, with his hands around his hips and a sad pouted comical look.


Take a glimpse at the recent headlines such as “Can Bush Find an Exit?”… “Will Bush listen?”…and “So Now What Mr. President”? Time magazine’s tone in describing the situation almost begs to be used as an example. “Of course some people [Bush] don’t like being rescued”. And the visit of the “Baker Hamilton emergency squad” and the “although there will be no lights flashing and sirens wailing” statement. Newsweek has assumed a more “professional” stance, with describing the establishing the recent foreign affairs commission comments, “The President seems to be getting a lot of reality therapy”, and the portraying the event as “the counsel coming” and Bush as “the decider”.

The Media has painted a picture with Bush and the geographical land called Iraq smack in the middle, with all other aspects being secondary. This week’s issue of Newsweek carefully lays out the context of these events, providing extensive detailed analysis of the political repercussions, intertwined schemes and webs of strategies in Washington. It savors upon the unmet expectations: Bush Operation Iraqi Freedom, as a fantasy for a democratic oasis in a parched dessert replaced by a more realistic expectation of some measure of stability in the region. The gossip scoop may be entertaining and even intriguing, but hardly pertinent in discussing the future of such an immensely grave situation as Iraq where people’s lives and jobs are at stake. Many people’s families have been torn asunder through the conflict and the way the media is portraying the imminent departure from Iraq may even be a personal affront to them. Analysis of what Bush is thinking is hardly relevant, but yet much of the situation is being discussed in terms of political strategy.

Bush may be commander and chief, but after he renders his decisions and selects the people for office, the results of his selections should be covered in respect to Iraq, not the political effects on his administration. He should not be the only one on magazine covers. The nine pages or so, out of Newsweek’s December 11th issue that it labels “Iraq” do not do justice to its content. It would only be fair to its readers to clearly distinguish between the juicy scoop behind Bush and the politicians (6 pages) and the actual Iraq and foreign policy coverage (3 pages).
If the Media opts to describe and analyze the differing perspectives, and provide psychological profiles with the people involved, why not describe the people who are actually there and will first hand experience the changes in the course of the war, the ones who will truly benefit or lose. The media can speak from other points of view, such as by offering reflections from Generals, the Pentagon military personnel, Iraqi civilians, the Iraqi police force, because believe it or not, there are people will be more affected by these development more then the President.
However, the media presents these events in a context that makes it difficult for its audience, unless they have a close friend or relative in the actual war, not to remain apathetic. In fact, when the Media takes critical events such as these, and casts an overall comical teasing-like coverage on the whole thing, it exacerbates the widespread political ignorance, cynicism and indifference that Americans have toward their government. The Media presents us with a play by play akin to what you’d expect in a baseball, or perhaps more appropriately one of a poker game as scheming and strategy seem to be a key point in the coverage. But is expecting such a high standard of reporting, where the media actually educates people with pertinent information and doesn’t dress it up with villains and heroes be naïve?

Although the juicy, gossip like headlines, and the hyping up of reality, the emphasizing of irrelevant and interesting facts over the pertinent others and the overall tabloid journalism has marked media coverage for centuries, one must be careful not to render this the immutable reality of news coverage. Rather than being passive consumers of news, and embracing whatever provided with the media situation can be if people rally against its practices. The first step in this is raising people’s awareness, which is why I have benefited not only in the academic realm from Media & Politics 2170, but it has helped me to become a more educated news consumer and a better citizen.

Clashes between New Media and Big Media?

The booming television industry threatened the once predominantly popular radio industry. Because TV provided a better and enhanced version of the one-to-many and many-to-many form of communication, its surging popularity that emerged in the 50’s and 60’s drew many avid listeners away from radio. In our modern times, it is difficult not to acknowledge the presence of a revolutionizing shift in the Media world, and not wonder if the new digital age will threaten and even cause the ultimate decline of newspapers, television networks, and magazines that serve as the Mainstream Media.

New Media has potential to reshape the conventional standards and methods of Media communication institution and has already begun to do so in a series of areas, such as through blogging and You Tube (discussed in greater detail in previous posts.) On some level, MSM has yielded many benefits from the web world. Many opportunities exist for News networks to use the web world to amplify their popularity and provide better news coverage. Internet technology makes it all the more easier for allowing audience participation in the editorial process. News networks often encourage feedback and evaluations forms and survey responses could easily be completed on the web.

In fact now, as a series of newer and better opportunities for news production exist, such as the greater number and variety of news sources and the abundant media watcher organizations, the delivering of the highest quality news possible, and the thorough educating of the public should be easier than ever. But recall that rather than functioning to inform citizens of pertinent objective truths the media primary objective is to maximize profits. Initially there were reasons for New Media to be regarded as a serious threat by Mainstream Media. These concerns would not necessarily be reflective of legitimate worries such as the loss of professional journalism standards, but rather simply because as abundant new sources proliferate on the internet, the alternatives being better and more comprehensive, meaning dwindling popularity and great financial losses.
And as Gilmor rightfully argues, Mainstream Media ceasing to exist would not be in our best interests. New Media is characterized with a certain degree of professionalism and has to abide by a standard of integrity and authenticity. It is difficult to maintain such a level of ethics on the internet.
If the way Gilmore depicted the distrust and skepticism of the blogosphere that dominates the professional news companies was entirely accurate it would be a profound illustration of where there would be concern and a serious of clash of interest. Gilmor lists a series of stories of journalists who chose to blog during their spare time, while still deliver professional articles and faced immense pressures and difficulties to abstain from doing so. On some level, it is understandable how there would be this exist a serous conflict of interest and why it be in the best interest of the paper to suppress these kinds of cyber interactions. The journalistic expression in newspaper or magazine is not necessarily reflective of his personal stance, and hardly his unbridled expression. Rather a journalist faces a series of pressures to do things in a particular way, such as to do one story as opposed to another, and what the appropriate tone the writer should assume, and very often his writings are edited beyond recognition. Aside from drawing away regular readers, serious major discrepancies exist between a journalist’s blog and the actual articles he produces for the company could exist and could threaten to undermine the authenticity or integrity of the institution.
However, the situation is a lot better than the way Gilmor depicts it “blogs have been slow to take off in the MSM…I attribute this more to the innate conservatism of the Big Media business than to anything else…,distrust among traditional editors of a genre that threatens its…core values.”
The two industries, at least lately, have reached a sort of compromise. The original distance that was created, is now gone and the two industries have converged in many aspects. Hence, the formation with blogburst. Recently it has struck a recent partnership with USA today. ] . The Houston Chronicle, a democrat-leaning newspaper asked blogburst to provide them with more conservative blog feeds, in order to counteract the bias and create a balance of political orientation in their content.
This is just one area where the interface of the two Medias.

Changing trends is apparent factor that even the most “conservative”, is Gilmor describe them, are evolving and learn to adapt to the societal trends. New Media isn’t dieing out its just going digital.

Quintessential Journalism
In We the Media, Gilmore redefines journalism as a realm of thought that necessitates response and feedback and embraces a unique revolutionized idea of how ideal journalism should be conducted. As a journalist himself, his thoughts are particularly noteworthy as he recognizes that his audience as more than just passive consumers indiscreetly embracing all that they are provided with. In fact, Gilmore views feedback as an integral part of journalism, and thus recognizes citizens as playing a critical role in the journalism process. For instance, after every article he feels the email address of the journalist should be consistently provided with and this would be a strong indication that public participation is desired and the neglecting to do such would illustrate the contrary. As web technology that allows for feedback instantaneously, and transcends geographic barriers, the power of the web to enhance interactive journalism is immense, and the two parties, the writer and the public, engaged in meaningful intelligent discussion will ultimately improve journalistic.

Although it is impossible to please everyone, as there are endless perspectives and discords existing in public opinion, a journalist’s role as an informative writer could shift, after filtering out pure nonsense, potentially libelous, or flagrantly inaccurate information, to the seeking of a sort of balance and the synthesizing into a medium the polarized ideas and values and perceptions of those members of society who have chosen to involve themselves in the news process. In fact the merging of this wide assortment of ideas could theoretically result in the closest thing existing to objectivity and accuracy in the entire field of journalism. Something strictly informative, comprehensive and objective transcending partisan lines, absent of the prejudices and individual perspectives of one writer could result. And if Wikipedia is any indication this idea, of what could result from unrestricted public access, this may have viability to it, rather than a strictly a nice utopian concept, overly optimistic akin to Marxist communism, but rather present an ultimate and real solution to the series of failures plaguing the journalism industry, (lamented in great details in previous posts of this blog)

Of course, this process of collaborative journalism, where it becomes more of a conversation, heavily relies on the willful active participation of the public in the news process, not to mention the integrity of their ideas. In fact, much of this rests on the belief of the public knowing more than the journalist. Collectively this is certainly true, but this is also certainly a possibly when you take into account the that such a news process would tend to stimulate responses primarily from individuals who take a serious interest in ameliorating journalism, rather than any random menace. For example, citizens who are concerned with factual reporting or media accuracy and find contrary evidence to a claim made, as well as people who have an avid interest in the particular field being discussed and may have additional knowledge or valuable information, and often people feeling personally affected by a topic will get involved as well. It also is usually relatively easy for bloggers to distinguish between the works of professionals or pros and threat of those just uttering nonsense, besides for the fact that latter usually consists of the minority. And thus very often, the final draft of information that is produced by the journalist can result in a smarter, more moving piece of writing. Wikipedia works this could work too. You take what would otherwise be an indiscernible hodgepodge of information and consolidate into one factual, objective accurate article/conglomeration, and you have an authentic, informative piece of writing.

However, this is not to say that this solution would be perfect. Dan Gilmor maintains a very enthusiastic stance through emphasizing New Media with such optimism it is understandable why many consider his work to be bordering on naiveté. Indeed, he only casually brushes on some of the risks involved and dismisses some valid concerns as overblown without outlining any viable solution or rebuttal to the series of potential obstacles, remaining firm in his original stance in his stating and restating that the advantages will always outweigh the risks. Inevitably, certain problems will exist within the field and certain aspects of journalism will always remain in the arbitrary control of the editor, as for instance, the objective standard will be difficult to be consistently maintained and implemented such as with selection of priority for a reporting an event, and the formatting and space allotting for a given story. Practical problems could arise from this system as well, such as a serious difficulty in regulating and controlling all the web mail traffic which could potentially amass to tens of thousands of responses. But overall Gilmore draws attention to a very real potential of New Media to reshape the journalism industry, and considering the sordid situation of our media any remotely viable solution is one to be seriously considered.