Blog#5 WmCampbell

Blog #5-William Campbell

“Teen Missing!” “Huge Meat Recall!” “Road Rage Rampage!”
These frightening headlines scream at us from the front pages of newspapers, from the pages magazines, from the speakers of radios, and from television and computer screens daily. At every turn, we are beaten and influenced by mass media as they attempt to get our attention. Mass media is motivated by a massive marketing system that counts on our ears and eyes to survive. Hype, hooks, bias, and sensationalism are some of the methods used to grab our interest. One simple fact is we as human readers and listeners respond to the horrors of scary reporting. In her essay, “The Female Fear Factor,” Myrna Blythe quoted Los Angeles Times reporter David Shaw, “The media, after all, pays the most attention to those substances, issues, and situations that most frighten their readers and viewers. Thus, most every day, we read and see and hear about a new purported threat to our health and safety.”(Blythe, p.100) Blythe goes on to say, “When it comes to selling fear, television and women’s magazines live by one rule-there’s no such thing as overkill, no pun intended.”(Blythe, p.99) Problems occur when the media rely on hype to sell reporting. John Stossel, in his essay, “Extreme Reality: How Media Coverage Exaggerates Risks and Dangers,” quotes Bob Lichter, president for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, “[The media] stir up problems that really aren’t there…this…poses a real danger to the public.”( Stossel, p.91) Lichter also states, “Bad journalism is worse than no journalism, because it leaves people thinking they know something that is, in fact, wrong.”(Stossel, p.91) We watch, listen to, and read the news to be informed of the world around us, and we are often told that the world is a scary, ruthless, dangerous, and violent place. Often, this interpretation is nowhere near the reality we know. Jane Ellen Stevens, in her essay, “The Violence Reporting project: A New Approach to Covering Crime,” notes that “the media give much less attention and space to common violent incidents, those that involve people who are not famous, or those in which only one person is killed or injured by an acquaintance or relative.”(Stevens, p.113)
When confronted, corporate media responds by saying they are simply giving the public what it wants. Certainly, they feel this is true as we do watch, listen, and read what they present as newsworthy. In the short term we can combat this by looking at the news media in a critical way and try to separate the hype and bias from the reality. We need to resist becoming less sensitive and withdrawn as a method of coping with the horrors of today’s news. We need to turn to alternative and independent news sources and support and expand their healing efforts. Perhaps this can become a strong message to corporate media that we require a change …”to return to covering the important issues of our day and away from sensationalized hype.”(Phillips, p.106)


Works Cited