Response #3 - Ch. 24

Ellyn Gary                                                                                          Reading Response 3 – Ch. 24

            Chapter 24 was titled “The News Media” and mainly focused on television’s effects on everything from the public, to the government, to the media industry.  It briefly talked a bit about newspapers effects too.

            There was a paragraph under the “Media-Government Relations” heading that I found very interesting and made a lot of sense to me.  It pointed to a reason why the media is labeled as having a liberal bias, and when this change occurred.  Sloan brought up the point that the media took on more of a neutral or antagonistic attitude toward the government after the Vietnam War.  Thinking about all of the time periods we have covered this semester the media’s relationship with the government has changed tremendously.  In the early days of the newspaper most newspapers were owned by government officials, or had some connection to a government entity.  Therefore, objectivity was a rarity and almost unheard of.  Most newspapers reported biased opinions and news stories that supported the official tied to the paper.  Then we slowly saw a shift toward objectivity as the years progressed.  The media also went through its Muckraking period, which eventually died out because people grew tired of the constant skepticism that the media reported on.  Any distrust in the government that was presented by the media quickly disappeared with the U.S. involvement in WWI and WWII.  During both wars the media fully backed the U.S. government, because the country was extremely cooperative and patriotic during those times.  Propaganda created and promoted by the media was a large tool in gaining and maintaining the public’s support of the wars.  Anything that went against the wishes and motives of the government, or questioned it, during this time was thought to be unpatriotic and certainly unsuccessful.  After WWII the media’s supportive role and opinion of the government was still there, just not a heavy as it was during wartime.  In the 1960s and 1970s the country was involved in the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal took place.  As mentioned in the last chapter, and in my last reading response, the Vietnam War was the first televised war.  This meant that the harsh and depressing realities of war were brought into American homes through television.  Because of what they were seeing on the TV through the news, many Americans were not so quick to support U.S. involvement like they had been during previous wars.  The reality presented by the news media is probably responsible for some of the anti-war attitudes that Americans had toward this war.  The uncovering of the Watergate scandal by the journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Burnstein exposed the wrongdoings of President Nixon, which eventually lead to his resignation.  These controversial topics covered by the media lead to the thought that the media had taken on more of a “watchdog” role toward to government.  This continues to today.  Sure you can pick CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, depending on your political views, but all media comes with a watchdog attitude at times these days.  I’m not sure why I didn’t quite realize this turning point and the reasoning behind it sooner, but as soon as I read that paragraph it all made sense as to how and when the shift of a more liberal media came about.