TAKING SIDES : Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Mass Media and Society
PART 1. Mass Media's Role in Society
Professor of journalism and sociology Todd Gitlin addresses how hegemony works in entertainment television. How, he asks, do the formal and familiar devices of entertainment work to relay and reproduce ideology? His answer is that ideology is embedded in format, genre, setting and character types, slant, and solution. Professors of communication Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch counter that television serves as a site of negotiation for cultural issues, images, and ideas. Viewer selection from among institutional choices is a negotiation process as viewers select from a wide set of approaches to issues and ideas.
W. James Potter, a professor of communication, examines existing research in the area of children and television violence. Such research is extensive and covers a variety of theoretical and methodological areas. He examines the nature of the impact of television on children and concludes that strong evidence exists for harmful effects. Jib Fowles, a professor of communication, finds the research on children and television violence less convincing. Despite the number of studies, he believes that the overall conclusions are unwarranted. Fowles finds that the influence is small, lab results are artificial, and fieldwork is inconclusive. In short, he finds television violence research flawed and unable to prove a linkage between violent images and harm to children.
Marketing professors Mary C. Martin and James W. Gentry address the literature dealing with advertising images and the formation of body identity for preadolescent and adolescent females. They report a study to explore how social comparison theory influences young women. Washington Monthly editor Michelle Cottle takes the perspective that females are not the only ones influenced by media image. She cites polls and magazine advertising that indicate that males are exposed to images of idealized body type as well, and she argues that these images also have an impact on the male psyche.
Professor and author Donald Bogle offers a comprehensive analysis of African Americans on network series. He traces their role on prime time from the negative stereotypes of the 1950s to the current more subtle stereotypes of the 1990s. Bogle tackles the shows of the 1990s, particularly the popular and controversial Martin. Professor and author John McWhorter counters that stereotypes are diminishing in America. In his review of Bogle's book, McWhorter asserts that Bogle has donned an ideological straitjacket, which blinds him to the strides that African Americans have made in prime time. He concludes that the continued search for stereotypes prevents us from seeing the very real changes that have taken place in the media.
President of NBC News Michael Gartner argues that identifying accusers in rape cases will destroy many of society's wrongly held impressions and stereotypes about the crime of rape. Katha Pollitt, journalist and social critic, argues that the decision to reveal victims' identities without their consent cannot be justified.
Doctor Joseph R. DiFranza and his colleagues report a national study that examines the possibility of children being tempted to smoke because of the tobacco industry's use of images that appeal to and are remembered by children. Because of the profound health risks, DiFranza et al. call for restrictions on tobacco ads. Attorney George J. Annas agrees that the tobacco industry has marketed products to children, but he maintains that efforts to restrict advertising are inappropriate, perhaps even illegal. He argues that some of the restrictions that have been placed on tobacco advertisements violate the First Amendment.
John E. Calfee, a former U.S. Trade Commission economist, takes the position that advertising is very useful to people and that the information that advertising imparts helps consumers make better decisions. He maintains that the benefits of advertising far outweigh the negative criticisms. Author Russ Baker focuses on the way in which advertisers seek to control magazine content and, thus, go beyond persuasion and information into the realm of influencing the content of other media.
Yale Law School professor J. M. Balkin argues that without media, openness and accountability are impossible in contemporary democracies. However, he also states that television tends to convert political coverage into entertainment. Current focus on the "horse race" aspects of campaigns and personal scandal is detrimental to media's central mission of communicating information, holding officials accountable, and uncovering secrets. University of London legal theory professor Roger Cotterrell suggests that Balkin's argument implicitly assumes that there is a political reality or "truth", which he argues is illusory. He contends that transparency in media coverage should emphasize breach of trust as the justification for publicizing personal conduct and treat scandal as the public revelation of these breaches of trust.
Larry J. Sabato, professor of government, Mark Stencel, politics editor for Washingtonpost.com, and S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, assert that the line dividing public life and private life is more blurred than ever. The authors state that this is creating an age of scandal. They conclude that this focus on politics-by-scandal results in disaffected voters, discouraged political candidates, and news devoid of analysis of policy issues and substantive debate. William G. Mayer, assistant professor of political science, defends negative campaigning as a necessity in political decision making. He argues that society must provide the public with the substantive information needed to make informed decisions at the polls and insists that this must occur during political campaigns. Therefore negative campaigns are needed so that citizens can make intelligent choices concerning their leaders.
Journalist Bernard Goldberg looks at the common phrase, "the media elite have a liberal bias", and gives examples of the way coverage becomes slanted, depending upon the reporter's or anchor's perception of the subject's political stance. Journalist James Wolcott examines the impact of Fox television network's conservative approach, as evidenced by the news programs that feature right-wing pundits and pro-Republican views. He contends that Fox's news and public affairs coverage attained the highest ratings when appealing to the "angry white male".
Author Michael A. Banks explains that as more people turn to libraries for Internet access, libraries and communities have been forced to come to grips with the conflict between freedom of speech and objectional material on the World Wide Web and in Usenet newsgroups. He adds that software filters are tools that help librarians keep inappropriate materials out of the library. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concludes that mandatory blocking software in libraries is both inappropriate and unconstitutional. Blocking censors valuable speech and gives librarians, educators, and parents a false sense of security when providing minors with Internet access, argues the ACLU.
Senators Paul Simon, Sam Brownback, and Joseph Lieberman speak up on why cleaning up television is important to the nation. They detail the frustrating experiences that caused them to support legislation to clean up television. Marjorie Heins, founding director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Arts Censorship Project, poses three questions about television ratings: First, what is the ratings system meant to accomplish? Second, who will rate programming, and how? Third, what are the likely political and artistic effects of the ratings scheme? The V-chip and television ratings will do nothing, she argues, to solve the problems of American youth and society.
Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has undergone several revisions of its mission. Professor Robert W. McChesney and author John Nichols discuss the "media reform movement" and outline the purpose of several interest groups to deal with the FCC's changes. In particular, they critique the current role of the FCC with Commissioner Michael Powell with regard to whether or not the FCC can still claim to operate in the "public interest". Author Brendan I. Koerner sees any changes under Powell's FCC leadership as more of the same pandering to industry ties that characterized past commissions. While he feels that the direction of the FCC has been driven for some time by the promise of digital technology, he speculates that technology is now leading regulation. In this case, the power of the FCC can be seen to encourage mergers that will ultimately result in greater involvement and control by multimedia corporations.
Ben H. Bagdikian, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, argues that the public must be aware of the control that international conglomerates have over the media. He contends that despite hopes that new technologies would control giant corporations, these corporations have wrested control of the production and distribution of most of the media content in the world. Conglomerate domination remains, concludes Bagdikian. Professor Michael Curtin questions whether or not concentration of media ownership leads to a conservative, homogenous flow of popular imagery. For example, television contexts around the world are increasingly featuring female characters who resist conventional gender roles. This happens because media firms benefit from transnational circulation of multiple and alternative representations of feminine desire.
Chuck Clark, government editor of the Charlotte Observer, defends the use of civic journalism by the Observer in covering election campaigns in North Carolina. He describes the publication's goal: to provide the readers of the newspaper with enough relevant information to make decisions concerning the elections. William E. Jackson, Jr., professor and U.S. House candidate in 1996, criticizes the use of civic journalism. He charges that coverage was narrowly focused on only a few issues, evolving issues were ignored, and important other races were not covered. According to Jackson, political coverage and the people of North Carolina suffered because of this experiment in civic journalism.
Media critic Ken Auletta discusses how the events of September 11, 2001, refocused news journalism toward foreign news and an explanation of world events. He discusses the industry's decisions about news, and the motivation of journalists who want to cover issues in greater depth. Michael Parks, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California, warns that as the terrorist events recede in our memories, print and broadcast journalists will return to the same tactics they used prior to September 11th. These include less of an interest in foreign news, primarily because of the financial costs borne by the media industries.
Journalist Simson Garfinkel discusses how today's technology has the potential to destroy our privacy. He makes the case that the government and individuals could take steps to protect themselves against privacy abuse, particularly by returning to the groundwork set by the government in the 1970s and by educating people on how to avoid privacy traps. Forbes reporter Adam L. Penenberg discusses his own experiences with an Internet detective agency, and he explains how easy it is for companies to get unauthorized access to personal information. He specifically describes how much, and where, personal information is kept and the lack of safeguards in our current system.
Author Matt Goldberg discusses the way in which the estimated 150 million people around the world are changing their social interaction habits and expectations, thanks to the ability to use instant messaging (IM). By focusing on this one particular application of technology, he offers specific behavioral changes and attitudes observed in some of the IM users and then speculates as to what the eventual outcome will be as more people use IM for a broader range of purposes. Professor Peter F. Drucker, a noted expert on technological change, outlines a history of social organization in relation to technology in order to put the "information revolution" into perspective. He compares the changes in our present and future lives to the introduction of the Industrial Revolution and reminds us that while social change often takes much longer than the term revolution suggests, the real impact of social change is often accompanied by more subtle shifts in our institutions.