Media Essay, Research Paper

Media and it s influences

The newspapers print a lot of stories because people buy the newspapers, so perhaps some people would say to combat the exploitation set out my the media monolpoly that we all must raise our standards a little bit.

I believe that the most important thing is that the public makes their views known, and that newspapers should respond to it. All too often newspapers don’t respond to public opinion and there is a very fine line to be drawn between the freedom of the press and license, which takes that freedom for, granted.

Murdoch and others play this game because it pays, because they know that there are lots of people out there who will buy the newspaper with it in it. Anybody who bought the Sun, or even looked at the Sun recently is ensuring that the next Miss Noble who’s got the next set of pictures of this kind is going to find a ready buyer at this sort of price. The only way you’re going to stop it is if it doesn’t pay. And the only people who can change that is the public, the public should exercise power in numbers, but until then Murdoch will continue to count his profits.

Others however do not believe a boycott would work. The Sun’s sales were falling and they were desperate to do something to make them rise, and they go for this young bride-to-be with some cheap journalism, which really was extremely hurtful. The British media, especially papers like The Sun and The News of The World are just sensational publications and use their power to sell papers only. There should be a regulation body in place to ensure that someone’s private life remains just that – private.

To study the effect and the process of media amplification we can look at sociologists like Stan Cohen and Jock Young who were particularly interested in this. Young and Cohen looked at the studied the media in terms of how it creates interaction between itself and the individuals who watch or read it.

Amplification is important while looking at if, why and how the media influences the general public, Marxists believe that through amplification the bourgeois can change opinion in the minds of the masses, in turn controlling the way in which the general public act, feel and think. Stuart Hall in his book Policing Crisis wrote in the 1970 s; argued that the police and the state deliberately reported the muggings by blacks in South London, for manipulation purposes, he was convinced that they exaggerated the extent of the problem. He said that there was a large moral panic, newspapers were full of lurid details of vicious muggings by blacks on white pensioners .

Another popular Marxist argument for the view that the media acts a syringe injecting the public with fragmented truths and lies is the example of the Trade Unions in the 1970 s under the thatcherite dictatorship . The Tory s used the Trade Unions as scapegoats in relation to the economic problems of the time. Grants argued that in the case of the famous (or infamous) Trade Union strikes of the time The media always tended to take the side of the management . For example the interviewer would interview the managers in the studio while the strikers and members of Trade Unions would be interviewed in the street picketing. This could quite easily lead the general public to see the strikers as deviant and anti the state because they looked deviant and aggressive as they marched through the streets.

Many aspects of the media influence the way we see the world and what we believe in different ways either indirectly or subtlety, advertising however has one main aim to sell a product. Advertising in the media is often shocking and up-front in the way in which it sells the product, it not only changes the way we feel about a product but can often make us go out a buy through sub-conscious psychological techniques. In the past media has been blamed on not only supporting certain individuals but also glamorising them to in the film Child s Play 3 a doll murders several individuals, this was argues to have glamorised murder and death and after watching the film two young children brutally murdered James Bulger near a rail track. The film had influenced them into killing the 2-year-old and injected ideas about murder into them.

Critics to these views exist, they believe in freedom of speech, they believe that people should say what they like to say in the papers, if a celebrity has taken drugs they should be exposed, an MP s deviant sexual acts should be printed for all to observe. But the stories in the papers are not stories of the editors, or articles by journalists but rather the words and scandal from the mouths of the owners of the media, the Murdochs of this world.

One of the best examples of media influence was in the 1992 general election. The majority of newspapers supported the Tory s in the election, but it was the Sun who backed the Tory s for the first time, the majority of the Sun s readers were working class. However on the day of the election the Sun s headline read:

If Kinnock wins today would the last

person to leave Britain please turn out the lights .

The following day the Sun greeted the Tory victory with the headline:

The Sun wot won it.

The first headline which was read in the morning by millions of Britons caused a significant swing in the voting when studying the polls leading up to the 92 election, the Mirror for instance had no such influence. One of the main Criticisms however is that what ever the views of the owner and however much they/he/she is trying to influence the public, if the paper doesn t sell then these can be over ridden by others.

There are a number of theories, which may explain the way in which the media influences the individual and the society these are below:

The Personal approach (behaviourist model):

Media Output  directly influences the individual  who responds with views on or may even act out

the influence

Opinion Leader approach:

Media Output  influences the individual  who responds with views

Audience selection approach:

Media Output  filtered out by  Individuals values and ideas, then own then

own ideas and opinions are formed.

The Cultural view approach (the Drip effect):

Media Output  creates an environment which attitudes and values of the individual develop  SEX

 VIOLENCE

 POLITICS