POL 110 Public Opinion and the Media, history homework help

Public Opinion and the Media

Based on the scenario and the knowledge gained from this section, address the following: 

1.How much trust should we put into the media to deliver facts about the government, what is going on in the world, and/or the truth? (What is the purpose of the media; what is journalism’s relationship with ethics?) Provide three concrete examples to support your answer.

2. Please respond to the following post from this student

Do You Trust the Media?

Personally I do not believe everything that I see on T.V or read in the
Newspaper. I know that everyone is looking for a story and also one station or
publication wants to be first to get the “Scoop” on the stories and they do not
always tell everything they see or hear. They can withhold information from the
the public but not from the
courts. Which brings to a survey
from 2009 how
most Americans feel about
the media “Pew Research Center shows that only 29% of Americans feel the
media “generally gets the
facts straight.” this is down from 55% in 1985. The new survey also found that
60% of Americans think news organizations are politically
biased.”(www.newsroom.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/160do-you-trust-the-news-media)

Media Deception: You are NOT GETTING THE TRUTH

“Many have realize long ago that
our politicians will lie to us at the drop of a hat,
but most have no clue that our
news media lies and deceives
us just as much, if
not more so.” The old saying
“truth is stranger than fiction.” Here are some examples:

1. In 1917, A Congressman Oscar Callaway documented
   in the official Congressional Record that
   multi-millionaire JP Morgan had infiltrated the U.S. media for the
   sole purpose of exploiting
   and controlling it. Morgan hired 12 of the top news
   managers to help him
   determine the most
   influential newspapers in America. The idea was to
   find the primary key news
   outlets look to and were this influenced by.(this is
   documented in the official
   U.S. record volume 54, dated February 9,1917. Once the editors arrived at
   a consensus Morgan then bought or infiltrated the top 25
   news organizations reported to him by his task
   force of news manages. An
   editor was assigned to run each paper, making sure that
   all news stories were controlled and the
   watchdog for freedom was
   officially neutered.
2. The CIA made its own foray
   into news control in the
   1940s with a program to infiltrate the media,
   with the idea to have select journalists
   parrot the official
   government line under the guise of
   national patriotism. Some news
   members were simply duped, naively
   thinking that they were helping America by
   disseminating important news. Others were
   simply
   unscrupulous and morally
   deficient in their professional trade and were easily
   enough bought out, spewing
   whatever disinformation
   and propaganda that they
   could cash in on. This project was
   known as “operation Mockingbird,” the name
   alone was suggestive of the  mission’s
   objective total control of the U.S. media system. According to
   former CIA Director William Colby, “The CIA
   owns everyone of any 
   significance in the mayor media.”
3. “Buy in to it, or just buy it out” The Government
   deregulation in the 1980s made it possible for the
   conversion of our media into the complicit,
   homogenized, neutered, spineless industry that it is today. Once
   deregulation was enacted, the watchdog of democracy,
   our hollowed and formerly
   esteemed press, became easy pickings in a hostile
   takeover for control. The current media of the United States is controlled by
   six owners and
   CEOs. Those 6 have complete control over what we
   see and how are
   news and information in the world is
   shaped and presented to
   us.(www.newsfocus.org/media_control.htm)

The media is suppose to inform us, be like surveillance since they can get in
to places sometimes where the public can not they are suppose to serve as our
eyes and ears. The media suppose to be the equivalent of a town hall meeting of
group discussion, they suppose to be informative to society.