Media Consolodation: Good or bad?

Today our media is controlled by no more than 6 major companies. These companies, are controlled by a very limited amount of people. The way I see it, this almost completely invalidates the mass media. When someone can get two completely different versions of the same story from two major media outlets, there is something wrong with our system. Today however, more and more people are being turned off to the mass media and going to alternate sources provided by developing technology. For example, people may check a few of their favorite blogs or talk to some of their friends online instead of watching the morning news. This is the new face of media. Media made by the people, for the people. It is individuals voicing their own opinions in an unbiased and limitless environment. There is no corporate hand that can control people expressing themselves over the web. This new type of media is the opposite of the super-consolidated giant corporations that control the major media outlets. Media consolodation allows too much room for bias to be injected into the mainstream.

User-created media is the solution to the ever increasing issue of media consolodation. People should turn off their T.V.'s, turn on their computers, and get some real insight and opinions from other individuals as opposed to the manufactured and processed news we hear from the mass media.

American War and the Media: Friends or Foes?

Does media coverage of wars help the government achieve its goals or prevent them from success? The answer to this question has changed over time.

In the Civil War the media did not really help one side of the fighting more than the other. This is because since there was no nationwide source of news, each newspaper just reported that the side of the war they supported was doing well. This certainly riled up the public and could have been the reason the civil war was such a bloody one.

However, in later wars, such as the Vietnam war, there was a national source of media. The public was also much more divided in their support for the war. As national news broad casted generally negative things about the war, many citizens protested. With the advance in technology, there were many video cameras on the battlefield, with footage being sent home daily. This new raw view of the war inspired a peace movement against the war.


Today, this raw battle footage enabled by technology has become more common, more accesible, and even easier to send home. Innovations like digital cameras carried by soldiers themselves, and the internet allows Americans to see footage of the war in Iraq the day it was taken. It is clips like the following, that have been a main contributor to many American's dissaproval of the war in Iraq.



Although the government does it's best to censor the techology fueled raw footage Americans see of the war everyday, it can no longer keep the public from seeing the war's real horror. Today's incredible footage of war is starkly contrasted with the one-sided and sometimes made up news coverage seen in earlier wars. With continuing advances in technology, the public has become more and more opposed to the idea of war in general.

The Lie the Media Brought to Life

In March 2006 Crystal Gail Mangum accused three members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping her at a party held on March 13, 2006. The charges against the three boys were dismissed as Mangum's accusations were completely false. These are simply the facts of the case. The accused boys were victims of a "tragic rush to accuse".

One might wonder how a case based completely around an entirely made-up story can get so far. The answer is simple: the media. The media dramatized the story to the point where people jumped to conclusions about the guilt of the boys.The media did this by bringing up un-related subjects like race and socio-economic status, by bringing in bias and preconceptions, and by some media outlets exaggerating the story to compete with others.

After the accusations, the stories released by major news outlets mentioned many things that weren't necessary for the reader to understand the story at all. For example, in an April 1st article, the New York Times called the lacrosse team "a clubby, hard-partying outfit with roots in the elite prep schools of the Northeast." Calling the team "hard-partying" and hinting at the average socio-economic status of Duke's students by using the word "elite", contributed nothing to the readers understanding of the story. What these things did do is make the reader likely to side with the accuser before any real evidence had actually been presented. The media knew what they wanted people to think and they made biased speculations to convince their readers.

Sometimes, the media dramatized the story just to compete with other news outlets' coverage of the same story. In the following clip, Nancy Grace uses an exaggerated tone to dramatize the Duke case.



The type of coverage seen in that Nancy Grace clip gives people an exaggerated view of the story and is only dramatized in order to compete with more balanced news coverage. For example, the coverage of the case shown on the Early Show.




The media's blatent exaggeration of the story and their providing of biased information is not an accident. The media is intentionally doing these things in order to get people to side with who they want and to not see the whole truth. The media will always provide the news in whatever manner gets them more viewers. This means they will not always provide the fair and balanced news that some people trust them to. The three innocent boys that were accused in the Duke rape case were victims of the media's unrelenting bias that caused many people to jump to conclusions about their guilt.

The Duke Lacrosse "Scanda;

An Image That Changed The World

This photo, titled "Dead on the Beach" was taken by George Strock 1943. Life magazine ran this horrifying image of dead soldiers on a beach in Papua New Guinea in order to remind Americans how gruesoime war could be. Life was addressing concerns of president Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was convinced Americans had become too complacent with the war. In response, Life shocked the country with this startling photograph of dead American soldiers. It being run certainly detracted from the complacency surrouinding the war at the time. This image will be forever remembered for its unearthly morbidity and how it changed America's view of war forever.

Cr1+1c4l 3ye

For my Critical Eye project, I visited Ernest Hemingway's former home in Key West, Florida. At first I was excited about the tour of the home/museum because I'm a fan of Hemingway's writing, but as the tour rolled along, I realized Ernie was just a normal guy... who happened to also be really good at writing.

The tour kicked off outside the house, with a general summary of Ernest Hemingway's daily activities. Apparently he was a fairly reclusive man, because there wasn't much to say about him. He wrote daily (obviously), was often frustrated by writing (even more obvious), and liked to hang out at a bar called Sloppy Joe's. This last thing struck me as odd. Sloppy Joe's sounds more like some place you would find an average guy like me than "The Great Ernest Hemingway". (Maybe not me now cause I'm 15, but you get the point.)

As we moved through the house, I slowly became bored with the tour guide and began to let my eyes and thoughts wander. In the dining room I saw a table. A chair. Forks and knives. He's just a regular guy! I have no idea how I thought Ernest Hemingway would have eaten before I visited his home, but for some reason I didn't think it would be with forks and knives. Upstairs I found a bathroom, a bed, lamps. Still, nothing out of the ordinary. I guess that's what I really got from the trip. Just because you do something extraordinary, doesn't mean you don't still live ordinarily.


All in all, I was surprised by my trip into the house of one of the greatest American authors of all time. I think the best part of the trip was that it got me thinking, if this guy eats with forks and knives and sleeps on a bed, why can't i be a just as good of a writer as him? Maybe I can.

"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. "
-Ernest Hemingway