Project 2 Media Bias
Need 4 pages and all 4 key request needed in paper!!!!!
There is no question that the media plays an important role in our political system. For most Americans, the mass media, particularly television, is the most important source of political information. Because of this, the news media has attracted significant attention from scholars of politics and communications, politicians and journalists themselves. Frequently, this attention has come in the form of criticisms of how the media presents the news. The media has been criticized for many possible forms of bias –ideological bias, selection bias and commercial bias. Among the specific criticisms of the press are that its coverage of the news is overly negative, lacking in substance, and driven by crisis.
Ideologically speaking, charges of liberal bias are probably the most frequently heard, but many liberals believe that news coverage contains a lot of conservative bias as well. Begin by reading the handout on evaluating the media from Brill’s Content. Brill’s Content was a magazine devoted to reporting on the media, especially the news media. This article discusses how to be a critical consumer of news.
1. After reading the Brill’s Content article visit the next two sites. The Media Research Center http://www.mediaresearch.org/ is a conservative organization that maintains that media coverage is biased towards the left.Ensure you have discussed Brill’s Content in your paper.
2. The group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, http://www.fair.org/, is a liberal watchdog group that holds the opposite opinion. Read what these sites have to offer (briefings, reports, etc.). Which side (AIM or FAIR) has a more convincing argument? AIM http://www.aim.org/
Explain. Again, ensure you discuss in your paper.
3. Now do some investigating of your own. I want you to do some reading or viewing of the mainstream media. Does the coverage that you see/read tend to favor one viewpoint or party over another? Discuss. Do you detect any patterns in what reporters choose to cover and how they report it? Discuss. How do you evaluate the criticisms leveled at the media raised in class or on the websites? How does MONEY play a role in media bias – give me specifics?
4. Respond to these questions by examining articles in several recent issues of one of the major U.S. newsmagazines, Newsweek , Time, or U.S. News and World Report. They all have websites that post articles if you don’t have access to print editions. Alternatively, you may watch the nightly national news broadcasts on any of the major networks for several days.
Be sure to discuss specific examples in your paper.
Conclude the paper with a discussion of what role you think the media should play in a democracy.
Any articles that you quote from or cite in your paper should be included in a bibliography. For examples of how to cite works for your bibliography check out the Center for Academic Excellence web-sitehttp://www.ccis.edu/departments/cae/.
Click on the Writing button on their homepage and it will take you an area where you can click on examples of citation styles. You may use either MLA, Turabian, or APA style. This paper should be about 3 to 10 pages in length, not including the bibliography.
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