Media Failings
Medial Failings
The media is often assailed for a number of failings. These failings include focusing on the wrong things, not focusing on the right things nearly enough and focusing on the proper things in the wrong overall way. While the media certainly mishandles class issues and other problems of import, their usual goal is probably not comedy but instead pushing one worldview and viewpoint over another and specifically instead of another. While media in general is largely ineffectual and problematic on a number of levels, some of their activities border on the insidious and starkly negative.
The pull quote from the test pretty much summarizes Diana Kendall's summary of American media in a nutshell. To show the quote again and in its entirety, it was "rather than providing a meaningful analysis of inequality and showing realistic portrayals of life in various social classes, the media either play class differences for laughs or sweep the issue under the rug so that important distinctions are rendered invisible." The key word in that mix, at least in the view of the author of this report, is "laughs." Why there may be a modicum of mockery in the media's portray of class issues, it is not always funny. The problem with the media is that they quite often have a class and/or political bias in what they say, when they say it and why they say it. Which candidate or political a network favors is usually quite clear even after a brief watching of what they offer and how they position it (Colombo, 2013).
However, the new media is far from being alone in this regard. Just as with the news media, it is often about pushing a certain worldview but it also about money. For example, the music television networks MTV and VH1 used to be famous for just airing music video and little else except perhaps the occasional news blurb or evening show. However, watching those networks now yields very little if any music videos and a...
News media has done much the same thing and in a fairly similar vein. The news media is constantly framing things in terms of class and they often focus on the poor being downtrodden in favor of the rich being the genesis of this degradation. However, on the very next segment the "news" starts talking about or actively marketing the next "cool" item to buy or music CD/download to buy. The morning shows are perhaps the worst at this but the blatant cross-marketing and ignorance to the real news items and problems of today is obvious as is the disregard for certain perspectives and viewpoints of the problems and issues that are addressed (Colombo, 2013).
These trends or some variant thereof have not gone unnoticed even by the general public let alone the scholars and experts. Indeed, as far back as 2007 the opinion of the media and of journalism in general was rather low. However, the data found by one source indicates that not all of the problems that exist are due to ambivalence and disregard. For example, the cited source points to a number of reasons that journalism is circling the drain including employment insecurity for journalists causing timid reporting, employment changes leading to a decline in critical and/or investigative reporting, media concentration and government pressures leading to bland news, media has been tamed by advertisers and/or governments and lower wages leading to less ethical reporting (Cushion, 2007). To be sure, the habit of some governmental officials who will not be singled out her to try and shape and "correct" the narriative is troubling as is the growing concentration of corporate power. For example, NBC and Comcast are a single company and ESPN/ABC/Disney are another single company. The former of those combos is trying to absorb Time Warner Cable into its conglomerate.
Other corners of the scholarly world point to the…
