Category: MaKayla Townsend

You may think you consume a healthy variety of news media. Reading news stories in different papers or websites to get the full story, switching up cable news stations so you don’t become too biased on a subject?

Well, it may be harder than that.

According to one well-known journalist, Ben Bagdikian, only six corporations rule 90% of what we watch, read, and listen to.

Of course this is just an estimate, but it is enough to cause concern and open up a bigger discussion.

Not only are the majority of the news sources we use controlled by the same conglomerates, but within these corporations news companies are often owned by people who have investments in other places.

We can see there is a conflict of interest after billionaire, Sheldon Andelson, secretly bought a newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, that had previously given him bad press coverage. After he repeatedly denied to have bought the paper, saying he had “no personal interest” in it, it was finally revealed that he and his family were the new owners. Since then there have been stories of the chief editor Andelson hired using a pseudonym to write stories that made the billionaire’s scandals sound better. It has also been outed that Andelson told his newspaper employees that they may no longer write about himself or another casino owner billionaire.

If one individual can have that much influence on what facts get out about himself, family, and friends, imagine the impact those six corporations have on news media.

One way they have major impact on the masses is the agenda-setting function of mass media or the agenda-setting theory. Basically it is the idea that the issues that a society cares about is set by the media in the way they portray subjects and how long they spend on the matter.

While media cannot tell you what to think, it can tell you what to think about and what not to think about.

This 1998 Saturday Night Live sketch below, “Conspiracy Theory Rock”, is a satire cartoon about the conglomerates that rule media, including their network NBC and parent company (at the time), General Electric. It is a parody off the educational shorts, Schoolhouse Rock!. Ironically, the sketch was removed from future episode syndications after airing. Creator and producer of SNL, Lorne Michaels said the only reasoning to this was because it “wasn’t funny”.

As a society we must be critical thinkers and never totally trust one source, but this is especially the case for mainstream media. As these companies could be restricting information, redirecting public attention from another issue, and/or pushing propaganda by orders from their owners.

Do not be swayed by these media giants, get your primary sources of news from places that are free of corporate interests and government influence: independent media.

 

 

Last year John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, did a segment on journalism, specifically, how important newspapers are to all media that report news stories.

Oliver is a popular figure for millennials. One poll found Last Week Tonight to be in the top 20 go-to news sources for the generation.

Although in the segment Oliver pokes fun at the fact that people categorize him as a journalist. In one interview he told a reporter that, “It’s not journalism, it’s comedy first, and it’s comedy second.”

Journalist or not, John Oliver knows how to appeal to younger audiences with his witty remarks and entertaining satire.

He knows who his audience is, people who have mostly moved on from print news sources and rely on social media to lead them to other articles and videos. It can be guessed that a large portion of the millions of people who have watched the segment on Youtube and HBO did not know the importance of newspapers, so Last Week Tonight is the perfect place to inform people of the significance of the newspaper industry.

Newspapers, both local and large scale, are the backbone of news circulation. They hire journalists to do research that other sources like Last Week Tonight and cable news programs use.

Unfortunately, most newspaper companies have been seeing their profits diminish throughout the years. Even with the large increase in cyber activity, online advertisements do not provide enough revenue to make up for the loss in print revenue.

Getting news for free is now customary in our digital culture. Even going as far as using ad blockers so we don’t have to see advertisements appear around the borders while reading online articles.

Although some sites have ad blocker detectors that require people to turn off the extensions before viewing their content. Last March the New York Times showed messages saying things like, “The best things in life aren’t free…Advertising helps us fund our journalism,” then gave the reader an option to disable their ad blocker or subscribe to the newspaper.

In Oliver’s segment he comments, “A big part of the blame for this industry’s dire straits is on us and our unwillingness to pay for the work that journalists produce. We’ve just grown accustomed to getting our news for free. And the longer that we get something for free, the less willing we are to pay for it.”

It is understandable why so many people have gotten ad blockers, advertisements are annoying. They are intrusive and get in the way of reading articles or watching videos. People are using ad blockers as a way to fight against the increasingly invasive advertisements.

And according to research done in 2016 by the Pew Research Center, the younger people are, the less likely they are to read daily newspapers.

But millennials are not the only ones who are causing this decline, newspapers are slowly losing all their audiences. 

Publishers need money somehow. And if people are not subscribing to print media like they used to, combined with users blocking their sources of online revenue, the future seems bleak for journalism.

Millennials often get criticized for not being in touch with the world around them when they are always on their devices, scrolling social media, texting, or playing video games. But by looking at studies done in the past few years, it has been found that young adults may be more connected than what is thought by the older generation.

Young adults are still getting the news, it is just coming from a wider array of sources than what previous generations have been exposed to. Traditionally people have mostly received their news from print and television, but now, thanks to
technological innovations, there are countless ways to retrieve the news.

Young people seem to be making the most of technology, getting their news from a diverse number of platforms. Although various polls have found that CNN is the favorite network of millennials, other research has found Facebook to be the favorite source for the generation.

Young adults are using Facebook and other sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and
Tumblr all provide a feed of instantaneous news from all over the world.

Millennials are using these social media platforms as portals to be used to view stories from a multitude of news organizations.

The older generations used to, and still do, seek out news and consume it in sessions. They may do this by sitting down and reading the newspaper, watching cable news, or listening to the radio.

Millennials are seen getting their news throughout the day. It is interwoven in their online socializing sessions. They are not making distinct times to go to direct sources to watch or read the news.

When young adults go on their social media feeds not only do they see their friends’ statuses, pictures, and videos but also shared news stories and articles. There is also usually a “trending” or “discover” section of the site or app, where the most talked about events around the world are displayed.

Some consider this new wave of journalism a good thing. That this means millennials, and other users of social media, are getting a variety of views, opinions, and sources.

Social media platforms can provide links to credible sources. While many young people may no longer check certain newspapers or news stations, they are redirect from their newsfeeds to news websites.

This new way of consuming current events has drastically changed the way journalism reaches its viewers.