Media s Impact On The Media - 1007 Words

Most of us watch television or listen to the radio on our commute in order to be up to date with the surrounding events. We depend on those sources of mass media to relay relevant and reliable information in order for us to understand pressing issues and formulate our opinions pertaining to the best approach in dealing with those issues. But what if the information relayed to us is biased and skewed or worse yet if those sources of information divert attention away from pressing matters and place the individuals in an oblivious state. The fact of the matter is that news organizations are more trusted sources of information than are many other institutions, including government and business. And the public’s impression of the national media†¦show more content†¦He gave an example that in his book of when wall street journal ran a story about how the federal safety officials were investigating an issue with certain GE airplane engines that had faulty parts that can disintegrate and cause a catastrophic failure, a problem that affected more than four thousand airplanes that transport thousands of passengers every day. The writer continues to state that he found this information to be very important to the public and that it needs to be covered by the news channel he worked for which was CNBC at the time, part of NBC network. But since NBC is owned by GE the agency decided not to run the story. Another persistent matter is the distraction and the diversion of public attention by the media, a strategy that is used as the primary element of social control. Its sole goal is to drive attention away from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. Noam Chomsky in his book Media Control, talks about how domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years have really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities and a whole another raft of