The media today are becoming more worried about their ratings and their opinions then actually reporting the facts. Media outlet sources such as Fox News tend to lean more towards the republicans thinking. As a result they tend to report of flaws about President Obama’s agenda. While on the other side MSNBC tends to lean more towards the liberal way of thinking and for example they will typically report on the good things on President Obama’s agenda and his way of thinking. Another thing is most media outlets care only about their ratings and money they make if they have higher ratings. They state they only report the facts, but they tend to only report certain facts or present the facts in a way that could be misleading. It seems like the more violent a new story is the more attention it will get.
On page 333 Gitlin was talking about the student group, Students for a Democratic Society. The Students for a Democratic Society was a group of students that got together on college campuses in the late 1960’s and protested the Vietnam War. The Students for a Democratic Society led marches against the Vietnam War all over the United States and United Kingdom, some of which had over 25,000 anti war supporters.
What Giltin means by “The observer changed the position of the observed” on page 333 is that the media will typically change a news story to benefit the news station. For example if a peaceful protest was happening and it so happened that two people out of a group of a thousand got into a fight, the media will most likely just report on the fight and how violent the protest was and not the actual protest itself. The news is suppose to reflect the news as its happening but now its turning into a see thru mirror because instead of them showing you what’s actually happening, they are showing you what they want you to see. Also no matter what you might think if the protesters know they are being watched by the media they might act a certain way and change how they would typically act if the media wasn’t there. For example a peaceful protest might turn violent in the presence of the cameras to help get their message and point across. I know at my job when I had the media following me at my job for a few days I acted according to policy and didn’t go into the gray area like I typically would.
One movement that I have followed both before this class and still to this day is the Arizona Immigration battle. At first the violence was contained in Mexico with the drug cartels fighting amongst themselves. Now, the violence is starting to spill over into Arizona, causing Arizona residents to feel unsafe in certain parts of Arizona’s deserts. With the increasing number or border bandits wondering the Arizona desert robbing illegal’s who are attempting to cross the border to robbing the drug mules hauling dope across the border. The violence is no literally in our back yard but the federal government does nothing to stop it. They post signs in the desert warning people to stay out because there are armed drug cartel in the area thinking this will solve the problem.
Finally, upset with how the Federal Government was handling the border issue Arizona decided to pass their own law to battle illegal immigration. The bill that most people know about is titled Senate Bill 1070, or SB 1070 for short. These laws made it if you were stopped by a Law Enforcement Official for committing a crime and during questioning if they have resizable suspicion that you are in the country illegally they have the right to ask for proper documentation. If you cannot provide proper documentation they will charge you with a crime and deport you back to your home country. With that people thought that Arizona was racist and this law was going to lead to racial profiling.
The media caught this story and created a war against Arizona. They painted Arizona as racist causing other states to hate and protest against us. They media would only show the anti SB 1070 protesters because they were more loud and violent. They were burning Arizona State flags, changing themselves to the capitol doors preventing people from entering and exiting the building. They had illegal immigrants holding signs stating that they are afraid to leave there house now. They were watching Sheriff Joe doing his immigration round ups calling him a racist and this bill is giving him too much power etc. This made great news for the media outlets. What they didn’t show or tell you about is the 70% of people who actually supported the bill, not just in Arizona but around the U.S. The pro SB 1070 people were also holding protest, but they were never on the news or had little coverage, because they weren’t good news stories for the media to cover. They weren’t showing you videos of the illegal’s trashing our desert on the way over. They didn’t show videos of drugs being smuggled over using stolen cars that were stolen inside the United States. All the media wanted to show you were a bunch of angry people protesting Arizona and calling Arizona racist. The media needed to go back to how it was and do fair reporting and actually show both sides of the argument.
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