Active Audiences

    Within the theories of mass communication, lies the idea that an audience can never be completely powerful. The closest the audience gets to being powerful is in the Limited Effect Theories, The Cultural Theory, and the Critical Culture Theory. These theories don't exlusivley give power to the audience, the audiences power is shared with the media. In the Limited Effects Theory, which was held from 1938-1960's, the media was regarded as not being extremely powerful. This was because theorists believed that the media only reinforced the status quo. They believed that the media reinforced existing knowledge and that the people had the power to manipulate the media. This idea is visualized in the FOX Network. Fox presses its extremely conservative views, but according to this theory, only people who already side with those views will be influenced.
     In the Cultural Theory, beginning in 1980, it is believed that people themselves give meaning to things and that people influence behavior. People are responsible for their actions and the media has no power over the people. This theory also states that television cultivates the reality of the world. In other words, people behave the way they do because they were influenced by parents or caretakers. The media only has the ability to capture the actions of people and broadcast them around the world. This idea can be visualized in reality shows, such as The Real World. In this show people aren't given a script, they are told to behave as they normally would and to ignore the cameras. The show has gotten so advanced that they don't really need physical camera men in the room. They have hidden cameras all over the house.
     In the Critical Culture Theory, beginning in 1980, it is believed that the media operates to maintain the status quo. It also states that the media pacifies people and is comprised of the corruption and debasement of culture. This theory only gives power to the most influential portion of the audience, which leaves the majority of people on the outside looking in. With this theory the audience is only allowed to be active if they have influence in the first place, whereas, most people don't. This theory is somewhat depressing but is definitely true in some facets. Think of how corporate leaders have the power to limit the news that pertains to them. Think about the Enron scandal and how the wrong-doing was scaled over the whole company and not on the few who did the most harm.

Theory of Mass Communication

          

             I would like to explore the many aspects of the frightening form of journalism: "Journalism as a Hypodermic Needle". This aspect of the unscientific mass communication theory is very interesting to me because I'm extremely interested in propaganda, hence the blog name "Loose Lips Sink Ships". I actually care about the strength of mass communication and I like to examine periods in history in which propaganda has affected our society. As of right now though, I just want to describe the reasons in which people of the 1850s up to the 1930s might have truly agreed with this notion.
              During this time period mass communication was being inflated by the invention of many new technologies. In a sense, people of this time were demonstrating the human quality of fearing the unknown.  Media was taking on a more widespread form and this made it easier for media as a whole to infiltrate numerous areas of one's life. Also, this was a time of war and a time when the governments of many countries were seeking more serious methods of controlling their citizens, hence the creation of propaganda.
               Propaganda was used extensively during this time as well as after to influence the thoughts of citizens. In its most purest form, propaganda was able to keep the citizen in the category of passive. The passivity of the audience can be attributed to the fact that the citizens had no methods of challenging the statements that were being presented to them. Therefore, they were subjected to information that was viewed as being unbiased.
             With this information in mind, it is easy to understand how media could be identified as being overwhelming and undermining to the social order. Citizens weren't free to make up their own minds and the media facilitated this domination that really was based in the government.

To Inform or to Entertain...That's the Question

http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/images/articles/HVR950NBCNewsHD.jpg

http://www.dudehisattva.com/couricolbermann.jpg

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/20041201/kiran_chetry.jpg

In our readings for last week we were introduced to the idea of entertainment within normal news. According to the reading, the job of the news is to inform as well as entertain the masses. I can truly understand how difficult this must be for journalists today. We are living in a world of star obsession and reality television. We are enticed only by what seems fun, exciting, and even shocking. The news doesn't always encompass these things and that is the downfall of our news media today. It is unable to entice people who can see anything they find exciting on demand, via internet or cable television. With this in mind, journalists must be more aware of their ever changing audience. They must seek out new and alternative ways of presenting important information to readers and viewers. The world of journalism is changing and in this new world it is the journalists job to pull in viewers.

I feel it is the duty of journalists to change with their viewers. By changing with their viewers, journalists can provide the news that is needed to keep our country running democratically. Without information, the citizens of the country are unable to make informed decisions. Because of this fact, we can see the importance of journalists in democratic society. It is a journalists duty to inform and if that can only be accomplished through evolving with their viewers, then that should be the path taken. I don't know where a medium between information and entertainment lies, but we all have to remember that the goal of news is to serve the people. The news doesn't belong to journalists, it belongs to the people. There are journalists that behave as if news belongs to them and as if the golden of age of news has passed. I feel it is most important to convert these people so they can see the importance of the viewer in the organization of news.

Comprehensive Sports Journalist Website

http://www.newavenue.net/

I was searching around on the internet and I happened to discover an article about a national sports journalism website. This site is supposed to have appeal to people who are interested in sports broadcasting, marketing, or those studying sports journalism. This website screams to me because sports journalism is my passion. I was very interested in the fact that this website must compete with ESPN.com as well as ESPN magazine and cable channels. When you actually think about it, people who love sports automatically go to ESPN when they want the latest sports news, statistics, and game analysis. Because of this, I began to wonder, what can this site offer that ESPN as a whole can't? First of all it is based on the web unlike ESPN. This idea is massively important because we are in a day and age where people search the web for their news. We learned in class about a term called "info snacking" this is the idea that people don't generally go on the web to read entire articles. They go on the web and get the summary of what is happening in the news. ESPN is very good at putting the main points on their home site. On game day they include schedules, scores, and analysis from sports experts. So once again I ask, what can this new comprehensive sports site do?

Perhaps this website's main goal is to appeal to those who know about journalism and who aren't just interested in game scores. Perhaps this site wants to entice true journalists who want to see more news writing and not just a recap of the game by an ex-player. I'm an avid ESPN.com and cable channel user and I know that ESPN tends to focus more on quick facts than on actual physical sports writing on their website. Maybe this new site intends to pick up the slack and create a clean form of sports journalism complete with statistics and facts, but they want to put it in a more journalistic form online. I totally support this idea and commend the website creaters for attempting to raise the standards of sports journalism. I personally feel that sports journalism is becoming close to the purest form of journalism and this website is attempting to make it even more pure. For that I commend them. ~Loose Lips Sink Ships~

article:
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/11885.html
sports site:
http://sportsjournalism.org/

Sports Journalism

In sports journalism, there is a lot of stress on being fair, unbiased, and balanced. This is because sports journalist only have the job of presenting a particular sporting event and commenting on what they witness. They can speculate about the thoughts of coaches and of players, but they are generally guaranteed a press conference with coaches and players after every game. Because of these things, I propose that sports journalism is the closest thing we have to the original pure journalism of centuries ago. This realization is extremely disheartening because it shows that a news form based in entertainment holds the qualities that hard news should hold. This is perhaps why I would like to be a sports journalist. I want to present sports in a way that allows people to decide on who has true talent and who doesn't. Sports journalism is fact based and that is how many fans see it. You often hear people debating about the abilities of a specific team or player. Because sports journalists have concrete evidence of the stats they report, they can be fact checked. Because they can be fact checked, they hold a higher standard than a lot of news that is digested by the public today. Perhaps hard news journalists should take some tips from sports journalists.

Outfoxed

I thought the video Outfoxed was very informative and engaging. It showed how little variety there is in the world's public media. I was blissfully unaware of this fact until we viewed the movie in class. I was mortified at the fact that Fox News spreads its own form of propaganda to the masses under the cloak of "Fair and Balanced". I think it's unfortunate that so many people remain unenlightened about their intake of "news". What Fox News broadcasts can hardly be considered news because it has a clear and basic opinion. The duty of the news is to remain unbiased and to present both sides of all arguments. Fox News completely throws this idea out and opts for a more biased approach that employs the use of fear mongering, distorted visual aids, and the phrase "some people say". I am making it my mission to educate all people around me to investigate their news. We live in a day and age where our journalists can't be trusted and where are news is tainted.

Another issue that this movie brought up is the organization of the news and those who are covered in it. During class we got into a debate about why normal people and things that affect normal people aren't covered in the news. The most important aspect of that debate centered around the FACT that women are overall quoted less than men. This fact is shocking and deplorable. During class someone stated that women aren't covered or quoted in the news because they don't hold high positions in society. The idea of this statement being a justification for the patriarchal views of the news media is ridiculous. Our society is dominated by men because so many aspects of it were created by men with the inner workings that support men continuously. Men recieve many unearned benefits in our society and it is a result of extreme patriarchy. For students in our class to follow along with this horrible idea is demoralizing because I can see just how unfair it is on both sides. It is unfair for men to not realize that they have a higher status in our society and it is also unfair that their status is unearned. The news should be one of the areas where your race, gender, sexual preference, or culture shouldn't matter. An individual's news value shouldn't be based on these things because when they are, many groups are left out of the news industry.