How American media manipulation shapes public perception and opinion

¶ … Free Are American Media

Events occur and become news, news circulate all around the globe. In early times it was almost impossible to convey these happening with in short period of time but with the advent of time technology grew exponentially and gave a fast source of communication called "media."

Media has played a very important role throughout. Any event occurring in one side of the globe gets to the other side within a span of minutes. They cover events such as politics, sports, entertainment etc. And telecast it to the other regions. Every event that had occurred in the past has been covered by the regions local and international media. The point lies in the contradicting news telecasted by the media i.e. one event coverage contradicting to the same event covered by another channel.

The process of broadcasting consist of many events such as coverage, filtration, etc. A channel covers a footage that is happening all around and then add/subtract material to/from it and present it to the higher authorities for broadcasting. This manipulation of news creates a deep impact on people's mind and result in the reaction to it accordingly. The motive behind this manipulation process could be financial aspect, political grounds etc.

Introduction

Back in 1800, where we don't see medium of communication that strong, was relatively peaceful as half of the world dint get to know what was happening in the other half and never bothered but today it has become a source of panic to every person as all they think to what is coming up next in the name of 'breaking news'. There are positive as well as negative effects of it on one's mind. In terms of positive impact, then the world news are spreading within minutes, allowing viewers across the globe to remain up-to-date with the latest around the world, On the negative side, the broadcasted news plays a vital role in creating perceptions in human minds with respect to the information that is being broadcasted. These perceptions then decide what opinion certain individual holds towards a particular piece of information and how s/he responds to the said information. With advancements in the telecommunications and Information Technology sector and with the increased accessibility to the satellite media and the internet that the masses enjoy today, the broadcast media has become a huge power in itself. With their power to manipulate information, and their capability to make and break perceptions, media houses today are not only lucrative business houses but also a center of power and information.

The 9/11 tragedy and the American media

In the contemporary history, the infamous 9/11 tragedy and the way it was reported around the world, emerged as an important case study of how information is relayed and controlled to create opinions over the broadcasted media and the implications it can have on the socio political environment of a certain region (Davis, Richard & Diana, 52).

Resear4chers and critiques who have studied the events that led to the 9/11 tragedy in depth agree that it has more complicated and interwoven elements then it seems to be and it is unfair to believe that it was simply an attack planned by a particular group of people on another group of individuals. Unfortunately, the American media with all its power reported and promoted the perception that the attack was simply done by one group of people targeted towards another group of people. The reporting was done using religious bias as a strong ingredient and as a result played an important role in instigated hate crimes against a certa9in religious community. Today, it is common for many Americans to hate and discriminate against people from the muslim community due to their perception that they were involved in the 9/11 attacks and are enemies of the liberal Americans, which is clearly not the fact. Due to consistent targeted attacks on certain muslim in the post 9/11 tenure, citizens from these countries constantly suffer from immense discrimination in different aspects of lives. The fault here does not lie with the common American citizen, but it lies with the powerful American media, who instead of neutral and unbiased reporting, chose to promote an agenda and a targeted attack on a community so as to create negative perceptions about the said community among the masses (Czitrom, 52). This was also against the journalism ethics, that emphasize on well researched. objective and unbiased reporting.

Conclusion

The way and irresponsibility with which powerful media houses have treated important events and the resulting implications on the international politics asserts the statement by Lord Acton that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."