So we meet once again with this chicken-or-the-egg question: does media influence politics or do the politics influence the media? Especially in cases of war or domestic financial depressions, there is a case to be made by investigative reporting techniques. As we have seen in our history, not even politicians know the full stories because they are simply not there. It is very easy to feign ignorance even though information sources are right in front of us.
I think it's impossible to deny that certain news casts are bent one way while others do try to report honestly. I think for the most part it is a battle between what we want to know and what we need to know. Conservatives are attacked for ignoring facts and being narrow minded while liberals are attacked for coming off as crazy. At least they try to show the facts. Not opinions, but facts.
I can also admit that while I generally support this latter view of the news, I think it can be done better. I often see great news reports spoiled with a snarky "what are you gonna do about it?" sort of ending. I think it's exactly this attitude that secretly fuels the debates.
Having said this, I think we all need to just do our own investigative reporting. The figures are out there for everything. CIA world fact book, WTO, Wordbank.com. They're right here. Check your sources. Find out who is supporting the news you read. Be warry of .coms.
"We can no longer live as rats. We know too much."
-Nicodemus, The Secret of Nimh
Firstly, awesome quote. I can say without hyperbole that Secret of Nimh is one of the most underrated movies of all time.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question at the beginning of the post, the answer IMHO is yes. From my past life as a campaign press secretary I can tell you that there is a constant battle being waged between various campaigns and the media as to how "best" to frame a story.
The media are always looking for a story to stir up a race, and campaigns always look to deflect from the negatives and accentuate the positives. This is no less true on an international level. In the reading about Al Jazeera and in the movie we viewed in class, we see how international media frames stories differently and we saw how states increasingly play a role in encouraging media to frame stories in a more positive light.
What struck me most about the movie was the naive eagerness of the two men employed by the military to respond the negative framing of the United States on Al Jazeera. These two failed to acknowledge the first rule of strategic communications: if you don't like the story, change it.
This is also seems central to public diplomacy in general. The projection of soft power and effectively advertising it is essentially doing what communications directors have been doing in national campaigns for generations, accentuate the positives and minimize the negatives.