My Media (final exam)

The core definition of “Media” stems from the word “medium”. Medium is defined as “the state or condition of being in the middle”.

Based on this, the definition of media should be “a means of unbiased communication”. Ideally, the media should receive its information from a source or sources and relay it to the people. All three elements of this triangle affect each other in an infinite sort of way.

The source, which in this case is the government, depends on the citizens who in this triangle are the people because it is they who choose to be in their position. The government affects the people because they are appointed to by them to govern them. The media effects the government because they choose how they will relay their information, the government affects the media because the government chooses what they will tell them.

The media then affects the people because the media chooses what information, and how to say it. Conversely, the people affect the media because they are the audience and without them, the media would not exist. The news reported by the media depends on what the people want to hear and see. This means that the media has to relay news that will be of interest to its viewers, so in a sense we control what we watch.

This definition and analysis can best explain the six models that were given by Leighley and Tocqueville.

The first model of the media that I would like to talk about is the Profit Seeker model. The Profit Seeker model is to relay news that is of interest to the public, because if the public enjoys what they are watching then the ratings will go up. When the ratings go up, they can charge advertisers to pay more for a commercial on the show.

What does all this mean? The shareholders profit from the money that the advertisers are paying to be on the show and all that money makes a happy shareholder. This is how the Profit Seeker works through the infinite triangle. Since the people are number one on the agenda, the source of the media will be whatever is most interesting to its viewers. If the government is the most interesting topic at the time, then that will be the news for the day. The quote “if it bleeds it leads” is a great example of how this model worked in the nineties. Although crime rates were going down, the media would continue to report on crime and give the audience the impression that the crime problem in America was only getting worse.

The result of this was many excessive police actions (mostly out of paranoia) to calm the public down, such as an increase in security. The triangle here again was quit evident, crime is proven to interest viewers, so now the media has to show crime as often as possible to increase ratings, since crime is so “top of mind” with viewers, the government has to respond with increased security and searches.


The second model of the media is the Propagandist model. The simplistic definition of propaganda is information that is spread to promote a cause, opinion, or goal. The Propagandist model of the media is to be a the puppet of those who are in power, their job is to not only gain profit for their share holders but also to communicate that their political and economic viewpoint(s) are the right one-- at any cost even if it is journalism. This is why Fox News imitates the tactics of the famous Nazi propagandists Goebbels, one of his main ideas was that less substance in order to promote the party, an uninformed citizen is easier to manipulate.

I will explain the issues of Fox News in depth later, but for now, I will use Fox News as an example of the Propaganda model. Fox News’ owner Rupert Murdoch is a huge Republican, and a major supporter of the Bush administration, and many times Fox News serves as a “pulpit” for Bush.

For example during the 2004 elections, Fox News wouldn’t say two hundred days until the election, rather they would say two hundred days until Bush gets re-elected—implying the Bush re-election was a given. Another thing they would do is bas his opponent John Kerry for almost anything, as shown in this video (all though the guy is a conservative he doesn’t realize that a networks aren’t supposed to do negative campaigning)! Fox Prop

In this model the triangle is interesting, because the source and media are not that far apart. The government needs certain messages communicated so that their party will get re-elected. The share shareholders give the media talking points that will make the government look good (what to say ). The media then says what the government “asks” them to in a way that will cause the people to re-elect their party’s candidate. For the media outlet, the payback for this usually comes in the form of preferential access to officials.

The Neutral Adversary is the third model. This is when the media does not take sides but they give the government the feeling that they are being watched. This model presents the story without any bias. As they do give both sides of the story, this can keep the government in check because they know a public who is aware of all the facts, so they had better tell us the truth would look at them. This is extra costly because on top of the research of the story itself, they have to pay for all the extra resources. My fellow classmate Sam Roka (Sam) gave a fine example of this in one of his posts.

He wrote about how a reporter form the Washington post Thomas E Ricks( article ) wrote an article about sending more troops to Iraq, but he didn’t just say that America was going to send more troops he listed three options. The first was to send more troops right away, the second was to send more troops in a long-term fashion, and the third was a complete withdrawal from Iraq.

This was just fine journalism. It gave you the story with enough information for the reader to draw his/her own conclusion from it. The way this works through the infinite triangle is as follows;

The media and the people want the government to tell the truth. The media gets the story from the government, and then presents the story of the government but with enough information to draw their own conclusion from the government; this makes the government extra careful with what they say, because it is easier for people to realize wrongdoing.

The Public Advocate is the third model. This is a step up from the Neutral Adversary, it is similar to the Neutral Adversary in the sense that it wants its audience to be knowledgeable, but it differs in the fact that the Public Advocate counts on the public to respond—not just read..

This model relays both sides of the story. Then they communicate what they think is wrong about it. The Public Advocate model acts as “activist for the people” as Leighley says’ “If the people can’t get their voice heard, then the media will make it be heard. Furthermore since it is a goal to be engaging with the people they will sometimes even use citizens as sources, this way the people feel even more involved and may be sparked to debate or protest “

This media unlike the other models usually must be self-funded, in order not to be influenced by outside agendas. With a freedom, anything can be said or debated because they fund themselves, and are not afraid to offend a sponsor because they do not have any. An example of this form would be from Dan Gillmor’s blog, in one of his introductions (Gillmor ).

In short, Dan Gillmor was reporting an announcement by a Chief Executive of the regional telephone giant Qwest, in the middle of his speech, Gillmor got a piece of news emailed to him by someone who followed his blog. He informed him that this executive had cashed in two hundred million dollars of his company’s stock while it was going down. It is easy to imagine how the press conference went after that.

This really shows us how infinite this triangle really can be. The people told the media the news, then the media asked the source about the news, then the source created updated news and the media relayed this to the public.

The fifth model is The Objective Fact model. This model also stems from its core definition. “Objective” is derived from the word “object”, which when defined as a noun means anything visible or tangible, and is relatively stable in form. Objectives when defined as an adjective, means, “not influenced by anything”.

Your opinion is like an object, and now we can clearly define the Objective Fact model. This model requires your opinion to be unaffected by the news given to you, so that you can form an opinion on your own, in order to have your own opinion the media must give you news that is completely un-tarnished and includes all details of whatever happened.

An example of this would be C-Span, they just state the facts and list all the details. This works through the infinite triangle in the way it’s supposed to. Government provides facts to the media, the media sticks with the facts, and then the audience takes the fact and decides how to react to it-- without the addition of anybody’s agendas and with every detail.


The sixth model is the Alexis de Tocqueville model (Tocqueville). He says that the news should be presented broadly in a form that is accessible to everyone. The news should be put into the simplest explanation possible right on your doorstep. You should be informed with out having to make the news a main part of your life.

Just as the government sends, you tax information they should send you the news everyday. The citizen must be informed and then can choose whether or not he wants to, take action on the news that was just given to him. However, whatever he chooses to do, the stress is on being informed. The reason why the stress is on this is that one the cornerstone’s of a democratic society is that the citizens have the right choose their government.

If the citizen is not informed, then he does not have the opportunity to formulate an opinion. An example of this would be a local newspaper that was given out free, all it says is what happened that day and that’s it, the people know what’s going on and they can decide to decide, but it was available and that’s all that matters.

According to Tocqueville, the triangle needs to be existent in a similar way to that of Objective Fact. Tocqueville says unlike Objective Fact because he says that news must be relayed in a simple to the point form and that it is our duty as citizens to know what is going on. That the requirement of the media is to give us just enough information to make a conscious decision whether or not we want to be involved in politics, but we must get the news given to us in the simplest way possible, so that we can have the ability to make this decision.

All these models have their strong points and their weak points, to choose one that I felt represents the media today, I had to see what I like and disliked about each model, only then could I choose which one should be the model of the media.

The Profit Seeker model is good in the sense that its central motive is to please the people so that ratings will rise and as a result so will profit. Since its main purpose is to make money they must keep its audience happy, the Profit Seeker model is a slave to the people. However, its strength is also its weakness, since its goal is to please the people then once they find out what their consumer prefers they will only give similar news stories to this and never give anything different because of the risk of losing profit. Therefore, I could not choose this Model—even though it is the most “authentic”

The Propagandist model in my opinion has no strong point whatsoever, if the news is trying to convince us to do believe something rather then let us decide on our own, they are taking away our democracy. News opinions should never be forced on to a person, nor should they be distorted when given to the citizen. It should be create by a person. This is why I could not choose this model.

Public Advocate I couldn’t choose either for the same reasons as propaganda. I don’t like that an opinion is being given to a person as the “correct opinion”, and I don’t like that this model sort of gives you the need to react. Although its activism is good and so is its agenda, I think that someone opinion on the government must be formed in his own, and not told to him by someone else. When one has an opinion regarding politics he should be able to explain it and most importantly defend it, forcing an anti Bush opinion is just as bad as forcing a Bush opinion.

This brings me to Objective Fact. At first my ideal model, but I am a realist not an idealist. Would it be nice for a reporter just to say what happened in the news with only the facts and with total objectivity? Yes. Nevertheless, this is impossible, because everyone has their own way of explaining/interpreting something, and it is very hard to say just what happened and without showing a little bias towards a side and it is even harder to include every fact.

The only way to really achieve this Objective Fact goal would be to read the entire transcript on C-Span, which most people today will not do. Objective Fact would be great, if it was available in an easier way but it is not and that is why I did not choose Objective Fact.

This is why I have chosen a “hybrid” of two models. I call this “mutant model” The Tocqueville Neutral Adversary model. What is great about putting these two together is that we can achieve Fox News’ ironic slogan “We Report You Decide” or as Huggy Bear said in Starsky and Hutch “Yo I lay it out for y’all to play it out”.

As I said before, it is impossible to have Objective Fact, but it is not possible for someone to report without being accused of “leaning towards” one side, and lists all the details of it. This is how I came to my “mutant model”. If everyone gets the news with both opinions in a truly “to the point” sort of way, then they can formulate their own opinion on the subject, if they want and if they do not then they do not have to.

The objective problem is gone because although there is a bias towards one side, the reporter lists the other side equally. This way a citizen can be properly informed and then if he/she wants, can formulate their own opinion on the matter. Then chose whether to be a Public Advocate

Today’s Mass Media has in my opinion utterly failed to achieve this standard. To understand this failure, I will have to digress into a brief history lesson that was given in Robert McChesney in his book “The Problem of The Media”.

The Bill of Rights (Bill of Rights ) specifically and un-specifically shape and created a blue print for our media system and its policies. Many politicians understood the importance and potential of the media such as Madison and Jefferson, here are three constitutional provisions that show this.

In Article 1 Section 8 it authorizes Congress to establish the copyright , the reason why the copyright law was established was “To progress of science and useful arts”.



The original fear of a writer was this theory; If I steal your soda then you lose something tangible, but if I copy your writing, what exactly do you lose as I wouldn’t buy it anyways?

The fear of this would have given the writers a lack of motivation to write because everything that they write would be stolen pr plagiarized. This is why it says “for the progress”, because now the writers can give society intellect and different views. McChesney says that it is very hard to imagine how many publishing and media industries would not have existed if it without this copy write protection.

The next one is the First Amendment, which is free speech . This obviously is open for a very wide interpretation. Many people like to live and die by this amendment, and it has struck much controversy in the forming of the media and in today’s mass media and new media culture.

Many people equate free speech with freedom of the press, if the government cannot penalize speech, and then neither should the “speech of the media”. This like everything can be used in a good way and bad way. If free speech would be used in the media to report whatever is happening that day, even if it is a negative issue about the government then that would be proper use.

However if it will be used by the press as an excuse for utter unaccountable freedom which would give them the right to only pose a partisan opinion and then advocate for it, then I would have to say I am not down with that.

Historians say that the first amendment was created because of a popular opposition to the antidemocratic nature of the government at the time. This is why when Jefferson became President he got Samuel Harrison Smith to create a newspaper unlike the present partisan one at the time.

The Right “to establish offices and Post Roads” was another monumental component in establishing the role of the media in the constitution. In 1792, there was a debate about how much to charge newspapers to be sent through the mail. All the parties agreed that the newspapers should be sent at a cost well below that of normal mail and the government should subsidize that it, this was to encourage the production and distribution of newspapers. Because as Tocqueville said’ “An informed citizen is one of the cores of democracy” The debate was whether or not these newspapers should be free of postal charge and not just subsidized. Benjamin Bache said that any postal charges for the newspapers would open the door to commercial pressures. James Madison wrote to Jefferson that even a token fee for postage was a “tax” on newspapers and a forerunner for something worse. When the telegraph was invented ,a similar theory of it being a government monopoly like the postal system was brought up. However, at the end of the Civil War it had become a competitive market. Thus began an age of commercialization, competition, and monopolization of the media

These three excerpts from the Bill of Rights can explain perfectly how media should work through my standard; it should be given to everybody in a tax-free way free of any commercialization, with a detailed report of what happened. The Neutral Adversary part I rather added in through the liberties of “free speech”, but nevertheless we see that the news was meant to be free of any particular partisan opinion in order for a democracy to function.

Unfortunately, the media of today does not value these three in the correct way. The media is not something that is subsidized by the government and works through a few of the models that I have listed, mainly the Profit Seeker and Propagandist models.

Today most news organizations are owned primarily by six corporations(link), this leads to many problems, because in general, a corporation just owns one form of the media but now corporations own many types of media (news papers magazines radio etc….).

When you have this kind ownership of these six corporations in control( the 6), it eliminates a very important thing, diversity in the media. When you have six corporations who monopolize the news industry, it means that you will only really have one different voice in the news. It is nearly impossible for an independent cable company to succeed in this world, to quote Ted Turner, “ the days of starting up a cable television network or trying to do it from outside the media business are over. It’s almost impossible”.

Another disturbing factor in this is Fox News, which is owned by News Corporation. If you add up all the media outlets that News corporations owns (courtesy of “OUTFOXED") their estimated audience is around 4.3 billion, the view of fox news is the same view as the rest of their media outlets. 4.3 billion People all getting the same conservative opinion is very scary and disturbing.

Another problem with today’s media is that they are all Profit Seekers, as most people are who have jobs. The media’s goal is to maximize profits; this makes it a competitive market because who ever gains a better audience gets the big money advertisers, which equals an increase in profits.

There are several consequences in this model, the first one is the substance that is being put on the news and the way that it is being put on. The media’s main interest is to gain a wide audience, how do they gain a wide audience? The definition of news as quoted by Jack Fuller in Leighley is “the reports of what has recently been learned about matters of some significance or interest to the specific community that news organization serves”.

Media has taken tips from television for this, it is widely known that a very popular thing to watch in television in America is violence sex and drama, so the media tries to give the news regarding these interests and putting them in certain forms to gain a greater audience. For example this why you see a headline’s of Lindsay Lohan breaking a nail at night club, rather then a story about social security policy. The media has figured out the publics main interests and have been exploiting them ever since. The little control the people had over the media has evaporated even more and because the media knows what kind of things their public likes, they don’t run anything that won’t gain those ratings.

This also affects the way the news is being presented. For example, today when you watch a news broadcast, many of the stories will be short, there are many graphics used to keep the audience focused, and the media choose the order based on “buzz words” and popularity. This media sets the agenda of what is deemed important and what is not, this is why during the mid-term elections many people did not even know they were going on, however they did know that Britney dumped K-Fed.

Another issue with this Profit Seeker model is that on top of the media already being controlled by the interest of their owner, and all the things that are part of his corporation, their advertisers ultimately control the media.

The media would like to keep their advertisers happy, therefore will do whatever they have to in order to keep them. For example if Coke was one of CNN’s top advertisers, CNN would probably NOT run a hard hitting story on the negative effects of soda to your body, because it would not be of interest to their advertiser.

It gets even worse when sponsors will cancel advertising, if the anchor of a news broadcast is pro-gay marriage, the sponsors product is something wholesome, and “family oriented”

Another issue is one brought up by the Daily show’s John Stewart during his appearance on CNN’s Crossfire (Stewart's plea). John Stewart’s main issue was that this debate on Crossfire was not really a focus on political issues but rather a greater focus on the personalities on the debate show. This is very true, most of the political commentators or debaters on television are more known for their personalities than their views. The reason for this is that the more absurd the personality, the more people hate and the more people want to watch him, so that they can criticize him.

My last two issues with today’s media are with Fox News and the coverage during the War on Terror. Rupert Murdoch, who is known to be a very right wing conservative and has always been a huge fan of Bush, owns Fox News.

This reflects on the broadcasts and content of Fox News in major way. When the war on terror began Fox made the constant connections between Saddam and Osama, they also helped create the anthrax fear. Fox said that the terrorists were sending anthrax in our mail, and that it was no longer safe to go outside, Fox said, “we recommend that you do not leave your house”. This created an environment of fear in America and an enemy which gave the Americans the need for a solution to this threat, and who was their hero? Bush.

Fox would put an emphasis on patriotism , and would say that this is a war on terror so if you don’t support it you are supporting terrorism, Are you a terrorist? They put a flag in their slogan, they gave us the impression that the war on terror was like a basket ball game, first were winning ,then were losing, now were making a comeback. There have been times were I have ask myself how many points do we have!!

This patriotic Propagandist approach that Fox took increased ratings, and then made it known to the rest of the media groups that there is money in the flag. This explains why when Bush initially announced war nobody asked him if there was a direct connection between Osama and Saddam, or if he was positive that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

An effect of this money in the flag concept was when MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue’s program, the reason for this was that NBC claimed that it put a “difficult public face for NBC at a time of war. He seems to delight guests who are anti-war, anti bush and skeptical of the administrations motives”. The fear was that NBC would get a liberal antiwar face during a time were the big money is in the flag.

The worst part of this is that Thomas Jefferson started his news paper to get away from the partisan paper norm, now what was worked on so hard to not exist, is coming back stronger than ever.

These are just a few of the many reason of why I do not think the media has reached my standard or any other decent standard of how the media should run. The media today is in a state of total control by their sponsors and corporate owners. What the media says must be in favor of the beliefs of their shareholder and must not offend their corporate sponsors. This is in not at all Thomas Jefferson intended for the media to be. Although he did famously say ““Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.” I highly doubt he knew the media would be a puppet of the government and a poison to democracy.

Although in a recent post (How are we?) I said that the lack of public in interest in politics has gone down is because these people simply do not care about politics and have discovered interests that gear towards their personalities, I still do not agree with the media’s actions today. My media model is that government should be required to give us the news with both sides of the story; this is my definition of being properly informed. The job of the media is to relay this information in the way that the reader can if he wants to realize that there is a flaw or a problem with what the government said or did. However, my stress was that we must be properly informed, and then it is our choice to pursue interest in it. When there are six major corporations that all have the same republican view, and gives talking points from the boardroom then the citizen is not being properly informed. The citizen is being lied to, tricked, and manipulated, by mass media and as I said are slowly poisoning the great democracy that what created for America.

Now with all these problems in the media today how do we escape corporate control? Is there any hope for our democratic society? What needs to be done? Is there an alternative? Moreover, how do we do it?

These questions are the first steps one must take into destroying today’s era of corporate and commercialized media. If you have a problem with the media say it. Just like the person from the movie the network so famously said, “its time go to the window and say I’m mad I’m angry and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

The people as I said before have a control over the media; however, they just neglect to use it. The reason why this power is being neglected is that the people believe the media does not affect their views and even if the media did affect their views what can they to about it, the average citizen cannot take down these super corporations.

This theory is what causes America to be victims of today’s news media’s propaganda. The statement that the media does not control what I think is correct, but they are the one who relay it to you, with this power they choose how it will be relayed, once they have communicated it to the viewers in the way that they wanted it to be said, the drill it into the viewers. So yes the media cannot tell you how to think but since the give you what to think about they have a role in how you chose to define it and this is very much taken advantage of by mass media.

The second problem that this theory says is a great lead in for the solution to this problem. The opinion is that one person cannot take down a major corporation is most likely correct, but many people can.

This is how new media comes in to play. Ironically, enough what in my opinion-started commercialization of the news has the ability to end or at least minimize it? In the brief history lesson McChesney gave that, I said over and applied for my benefit. I said that a new form of communication (telegraph) ended the government subsidizing the news and lead us into the age that we are in now of corporate commercialization. The solution to this now is very clear, fight fire with fire. Just like a new technology of communication-started commercialization, it can also end it.

In the first chapter of Dan Gillmor’s book (Gillmor1) he explains how the new technologies of today give the audience a new role. This role is now that everyone has the opportunity to be media, we now cannot only watch news, but we can make it. Here are a couple of examples; the camera phone is a perfect one is a major player in this, pictures are a part of journalism and many journalists have expensive professional photographers. It used to be that a camera was a pain because they are too big to carry around and everyone is too lazy to get them developed, it used to be that the only people who consistently carried around cameras were Chinese tourists. Now in an age of camera phones and tiny digital cameras anyone can make new. A perfect example of this was the recent and over covered story of the Michael Richards Racist tirade (My Plea). A member of the audience taped his racist comments on his phone, put it on the internet and it became a national story all because of a member of the audience.

Another major advance in technology is the RSS (Really simple syndication) feed, which give people the option to choose what they are told in their own order. This completely eliminates the power that the media had of choosing what we watch.(agenda setting, priming, framing)

The last example is one that gives the audience a voice. The new voice of the people are called weblog, a weblog is an online journal that someone put up either containing his own thoughts or commenting on though comments of others or even (gasp) Mass Media. This is the new voice and new community, that can actually fit into the model that our founding father of the constitution hoped that media and democracy. Citizens now have the power to change what they are being told if they don’t like it, they now have a voice that is seen by other. The great thing about blogging is that it’s basically free of the threat of commercialization and corporate control that our media is under today.

The reason why the big boys do not affect blogers is that bloger is not in it for the money. A bloger has an idea and wants to get it across, that I his/hers only motive (unless your me and your forced). He is mad and angry and will not take it anymore, blogers have turned into a community, and not just a fad. The people in this community don’t all agree with each others views but they do agree on want point, journalists aren’t the only ones who can get their voice heard and make a difference the people can too. Democracy is coming back with a force!

But who cares what some guy has to say on his stupid blog! It’s just some angry guy ranting away on the internet!!! Many people would say.

This may be true but there are some defenses against this claim, or stereo type. A blog can make difference in a through a single person or through a group. Blogers are a community therefore is they all agree that something is wrong they can change it. This how the uprising of 2003. The uprising of 2003 in a very short was a result of the potential of media cross ownership, this is when one corporation owns several news outlets in one town, further lessening the little diversity we have now. FCC Chairmen Michael Powel wanted to grant access to grant permission to these corporations to expand there monopolies. Fortunately, the people rose up, although these hearings were not on television, they were on the internet, and all the people who knew about this problem were able to discuss it on the internet. This resulted in the citizens actually taking action, they went to hearings, protested, and publicized this problem and its risks. This new activism was successful in its goal and the corporations seeking leniencies with their monopolies were not granted permission to own an entire news outlet of a town.
This was a great example of how blogers united can change something that thing is wrong with our media.

The next one is an example in Gillmor of another positive way to use new media, as actual media! the coverage came from a blogger named Zeyad, whose “Healing Iraq site181” had become an important channel for anyone who wanted to understand how occupied Iraq was faring. His reports were clear correct and drew a large audience because of it. He told this to Gillmor in an email “I was surprised that people would rely on my blog as a source of information together with news,” he told me in an email. “Many of my readers have confessed to me that they check out my blog even before checking out news sites such as CNN, BBC, etc. What I find people more interested in is firsthand accounts of daily life in Iraq, and coming from an Iraqi they give it more credence than if it were coming from western journalists.”

Up until now, new media has been or blog nation has been a work in progress. The informed citizens are doing their part and are writing about issues with that they feel need to be fixed, and sometimes they make a difference. As we saw that new media can even be used as source of news, instead of mass media, but I think that is thinking way far in advance. New media is still in its growing processes and I can’t make an evaluation of it for this reason, I think it has its good things. However it definitely has its bad things, for example trolling problem Gillmor explains in his book, trolling are people who like to mess with bloggers, they will say an opinion just to get spark out of someone. I think that it will take a blogger nation a couple of more years until they are actually taken seriously.

I think that New Media when it becomes a more important part of our media can play a major role in the model that I think the media should be run. The media can be new neutral adversary to complement the model of Tocqueville that I talked about. The news is given to everybody from the media with both opinions so the public can know that they are getting the truth. New Media can serve as a watchdog to the mass media, this way mass media cannot propagandize, distort, set agendas, or do any of the other terrible things that the do now days. I think that a model like this would be a wonderful form, since both sources of information and communication are affected by the citizens to make sure that the democratic dream that was set out for our country stands.

I would like to bid farwell by ending with this video from Robert McChesney.
McChesney press confrence